The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Anthony Fauci, took advantage of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution 111 times to not answer questions during a hearing of the House of Representatives Oversight Subcommittee on the origin of the covid-19 pandemic and the decisions taken during the health emergency.
Fauci, who lamented the “inordinate obsession” against him, read a message in which he stated: “Following the advice of my attorney, I respectfully decline to respond under my rights protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.”
Throughout his appearance, he appealed 111 times to the Fifth Amendment to justify his silence.
The former health official stated that he decided not to respond because Republican Senator Rand Paul summoned him to testify to “justify his repeated public promises that I will end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.'”
The relationship between Fauci and Paul has been marked by tension for years.
Paul has argued on numerous occasions that Fauci should be in prison and has taken the matter to the Department of Justice, believing that he was responsible for funding research in China that triggered the pandemic.
The main point of disagreement between the two is whether the coronavirus originated naturally, as Fauci maintains, or in a laboratory, as Paul claims.
Over the weekend, the Republican senator published more than a thousand pages of Fauci’s diary and, this Tuesday, more than a hundred scientists released a letter in his defense, considering that he has been the target of attacks by President Donald Trump’s administration.
The president also dedicated this Wednesday one of his messages on the Truth Social network to Dr. Fauci, in which he questioned his management and took the opportunity to attack his predecessor in office, Joe Biden.
“On this issue, I went over Fauci. His ideas were crazy! Furthermore, I said from the beginning that the virus came from the Wuhan laboratory in China. Fauci totally disagreed, as he was always trying to protect China,” Trump wrote.
The president added that he inherited Fauci, “who had been in office since the 1980s, but as time went by I trusted him less and less. He made too many wrong decisions, like in the case of masks.”
The Fifth Amendment guarantees a person’s right to refuse to answer questions from an authority when they believe their answers could incriminate them.
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