Michael Goodwin: Fauci’s refusal to answer questions at Senate hearing reveals important truth

Anthony Fauci sat in front of the Senate and took the Fifth. Not once, as a strategic dodge on one dicey question, but repeatedly, as a blanket shield against the whole inquiry. For the man who spent two years telling Americans he was simply "following the science" and that any skepticism about lab leaks or mask mandates was itself dangerous, this is quite a landing spot. You don't invoke the right against self-incrimination because you're confident there's nothing to incriminate.

The hearing produced no new facts on pandemic origins, and that's the point people should sit with. Four years and untold billions later, the American public still doesn't have a straight answer on how COVID started, who funded what research, or why certain findings got buried in early 2020. Every time someone in a position to know something invokes the Fifth, it's another brick in a wall between the public and the truth. That's not a technicality. That's the story.

We've been told for years that questioning Fauci was fringe behavior, the province of cranks and conspiracy theorists. Funny how those "conspiracy theories" keep aging into open questions serious senators feel entitled to ask under oath. If the answers were as boring and settled as we were assured, there'd be no need for constitutional cover.

None of this proves criminal wrongdoing by itself. But it does confirm something a lot of Americans suspected long before any hearing: the people who demanded total trust during the pandemic have not earned it back, and their own conduct under oath is why.