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“Being pardoned implies you are immune to prosecution. If you have immunity you can’t plead the 5th.”

All due respect, I’m not sure that’s acc.

Can you provide a source for that? Id be interested to know if they can catch his lying azz using that.

Yeah - I don’t think that is correct, either. I’d like to see a source for that claim.

But it’s important to understand the many things that are likely going on here. Let me dispense with the doomer positions first. Perhaps Paul is just grandstanding for his glory and satisfaction of forcing Fauci to sit through this. And after the Kabuki theater that will be it. I don’t think that’s the case.

But, an important point everyone seems to be overlooking is that Fauci’s diary is radically incriminating. And Fauci is immune to federal criminal prosecution (assuming the pardon can’t be challenged, but I think Paul is moving on that), but he is not immune to prosecution in the States nor is he immune to civil prosecution.

And, more importantly, Fauci’s radically incriminating diary not only incriminates him,. but many coconspirators. And none of them has a pardon. So they are getting Fauci on the record here, even if it’s just appeals to his 5th amendment rights, as a warning shot across the bow for his coconspirators. Unless Paul and the DoJ have no balls or are just playing Kabuki theater, we’re going to see follow up with them. Criminally. Then, when there is discoverable information from those trials and hopefully convictions, the States can build on that and civil lawsuits can also build off of that. And Fauci is fair game in those cases.

But we’ll see. Maybe it is Kabuki theater. RandFan - want to defend Paul against that claim?

Because the communication must be self-incriminating, an individual who has received immunity cannot invoke the Fifth Amendment as a basis for refusing to answer questions; any statements would not be incriminating because the immunity prevents the government from using those statements (or any evidence derived from them) in a criminal prosecution against the individual. Likewise, an individual who has received a pardon may not have any basis for invoking the Fifth Amendment. Finally, an individual who has been convicted of a crime and sentenced cannot invoke the Fifth Amendment.