Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford pointed this out explicitly at the hearing, citing the Lerner precedent. If the same legal principle applies to Fauci — and there’s a credible argument it does — he may have inadvertently stripped himself of Fifth Amendment protection for everything he voluntarily touched on in his opening statement.
There’s more. Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul noted at the hearing that it is a federal crime to destroy government documents. Fauci’s own records contain a February 2020 email in which he allegedly instructed then-NIH Director Francis Collins to “Please delete this e-mail after you read it” — sent right after a phone call about COVID-19 origins. That email and the instruction to destroy it were discovered in HHS records. Destroying federal documents is not a pardoned offense if it constitutes obstruction of a federal investigation. And it is not necessarily covered by Biden’s preemptive pardon, depending on exactly when and how the conduct occurred.
