Chuck Todd: Fauci Taking the Fifth Was a Terrible Idea
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
Chuck Todd calling this a "terrible idea" is almost funny, because it undersells what actually happened. This is a man who spent two years telling Americans he was "the science," who lectured governors and shut down small businesses over gathering limits he couldn't fully justify, and now he's pleading the Fifth 111 times rather than answer basic questions from a Senate committee. That's not a bad PR strategy.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Anthony Fauci will likely not get thrown in jail, but there seems to be a realization that he’s likely about to endure a years-long legal battle over how he handled the COVID pandemic. The diary entries are damning, and a Senate panel has his iPhone.
He was held in contempt for failing to answer questions before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where he invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Chuck Todd calling this a "terrible idea" is almost funny, because it undersells what actually happened. This is a man who spent two years telling Americans he was "the science," who lectured governors and shut down small businesses over gathering limits he couldn't fully justify, and now he's pleading the Fifth 111 times rather than answer basic questions from a Senate committee. That's not a bad PR strategy. That's someone who knows exactly what's in those diary entries and exactly what's on that iPhone.
The contempt finding matters here. Congress doesn't hold witnesses in contempt for shrugging their shoulders once or twice. This was a sustained, deliberate refusal to engage, question after question, on a public health response that reshaped the entire country. If a Trump official had done this, every anchor currently fretting over Fauci's "legal exposure" would be calling it obstruction and demanding jail time by dinner.
What's striking is how the tone has shifted even among people who spent years defending him. Nobody's saying he's innocent anymore. They're saying the optics are bad, which is a very different argument than the one they were making in 2021. The diary entries being "damning" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and it should worry anyone who still thinks this was just about masks and vaccines.
Fauci built his authority on the claim that he was simply following the data, above politics, beyond reproach. Taking the Fifth 111 times is not the posture of a man confident that story holds up. If he's got nothing to hide, he has a funny way of showing it, and the country deserves the answers he's been avoiding for years now.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.