Fauci joins list of officials who have invoked the Fifth Amendment before Congress

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who directed the United States' response to the COVID-19 pandemic, declined to answer more than 100 questions during a recent Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The committee voted along party lines to hold him in contempt, a misdemeanor that can carry a one-year prison term.

Legal scholars note that invoking the Fifth Amendment does not imply guilt, though it can affect public perception.

Fauci is not the first official to use the privilege in congressional hearings. During the 1950s, over a hundred witnesses before Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist investigations invoked the Fifth Amendment. In the 1980s, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North invoked the right while testifying about the Iran-Contra affair after receiving limited immunity. Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner declined to answer questions in a 2013 hearing on alleged targeting of conservative groups and was later cleared of criminal liability. More recently, several allies of President Donald Trump, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, invoked the Fifth Amendment during the House investigation of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.