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Sen Josh Hawley Challenges Pleading The Fifth Rights And Gets Ridiculed
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) attempted to stick it to Dr. Anthony Fauci during Wednesday’s hearing on the origins of COVID-19, but, alas, Donald Trump got in his way, sort of.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, invoked the Fifth Amendment during his testimony, saying that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s repeated calls to put him “behind bars” and other “slanderous comments” would make “any reasonable person” come “to the same conclusion.”
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Hawley hoped to make an example of Fauci during his own questioning, only to have things fall apart when he posted a segment of the hearing on social media with this caption: “Hint for you: no honest person pleads the Fifth.”
Hawley may have intended his statement to be a devastating social media truth bomb, but, truth is, it just bombed.
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That’s because Hawley forgot that his party’s leader, President Donald Trump (in case you forgot), has had his own issues invoking that pesky Fifth Amendment.
In fact, Trump invoked the Fifth more than 440 times during a 2022 deposition for the New York attorney general’s fraud investigation into his firm.
Perhaps more embarrassing: Back in 2016, Trump told an Iowa rally: “The mob takes the Fifth Amendment. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
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Not surprisingly, some people on X felt obliged to point out Trump’s own contradictions regarding the Fifth.
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Others mockingly praised the senator for obliquely admitting that, by his own logic, Trump is very dishonest.
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