President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he respects President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Dr. Anthony Fauci, even after the longtime public health official repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a contentious Senate hearing examining the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, Trump questioned whether Biden personally signed the pardon, raising concerns about the administration’s use of an autopen.

Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump emphasized the extraordinary authority vested in the presidency when it comes to granting clemency.

“The most powerful thing a president has, they say, is the power of pardon,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “So he was pardoned by Biden, and I respect that. I know how powerful it is. … They say it’s literally the most powerful thing a president has.”

Before leaving office, Biden issued Fauci a sweeping pardon covering any potential federal offenses committed between Jan. 1, 2014, and Jan. 19, 2025.

The pardon came about two years after Fauci retired from public service. He had spent 38 years leading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and served both as Biden’s chief medical adviser and as one of the leading figures in the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Trump said the only lingering question surrounding the pardon concerns whether Biden personally approved it or whether it was executed through an autopen. Trump and members of his administration have argued that pardons and executive actions signed by autopen could be legally questionable, despite the fact that previous presidents have also used the device.

“He probably didn’t sign this one,” Trump said Wednesday, referring to Biden’s pardon of Fauci. “So, I can’t tell you what the law is. I’ve heard that you have to have a lot of proof, you need to have letters, you need to have all sorts of things.”

Trump later added, “Maybe there’s something on the autopen. Other than that, the power of pardon is very powerful.”

Earlier Wednesday, Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where he invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during a hearing that lasted roughly three hours as Republican lawmakers sharply criticized his handling of the pandemic.

Before the hearing began, committee chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released thousands of pages from Fauci’s personal diary spanning 2019 through 2022, encompassing much of the pandemic period. In his opening remarks, Fauci accused Paul of being singularly focused on prosecuting him and said that concern drove his decision not to answer lawmakers’ questions.

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci remarked.

Following the hearing, Paul announced that he intends to seek a committee vote next week to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

Trump also weighed in on Fauci’s repeated invocation of the Fifth Amendment, calling the move “terrible.”

He continued, “I inherited Fauci. He was here from the 1980s, so I had him for a period of time. I disagreed with him on a lot. I would’ve had to close down the whole country if I listened to him.”

{Matzav.com}