Oversight Project Puts Fauci in Box, Autopen Pardon in Conflict with Claims for Fifth
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 29, 2026
Washington, D.C.– The Oversight Project’s work was on full display during today’s historic hearing in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs with Dr. Anthony Fauci (“Fauci”). The conditions created by our autopen investigation and associated litigation forced the scenario that all Americans saw play out across their television screens.
Fauci refused to answer questions on the basis of his Fifth Amendment rights after being confronted with the fact that the specific questions put to him were only about conduct for which Fauci received a blanket pardon from President Joseph R. Biden’s autopen. Fauci openly accepted this pardon; he did not refuse it on the grounds that it was not necessary.
This blanket pardon purported to render Fauci absolutely immune for any conduct during the final two years of Obama Administration, Trump 45, and Biden Administrations; if Fauci illegally shredded documents or defrauded the American people in 2020 or 2021 during the height of the COVID crisis he could openly brag about that fact and be completely immune under his purported pardon. Insofar as a pardon confers immunity. It is well established that “if the witness has already received a pardon, he can no longer set up his privilege, since he stands, with respect to such offense, as if it had never been committed.” Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591, 599 (1896). Put differently, Fauci’s acceptance of the autopen pardon allows the Committee to use the pardon as a grant of immunity and compel Fauci to answer specific questions within the scope of the pardon. And, as the testimony is compellable by virtue of immunity, there is no question of voluntary waiver.
The answer may well lie in the Oversight Project’s autopen work and the diligent work of House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s investigation into the autopen. The last minute pardons by President Biden’s autopen were almost certainly invalid. Thus, Fauci’s legal theory appears to really be–although neither he nor his attorneys would ever admit it–that the autopened pardon Fauci received may well be invalid and therefore Fauci may fear prosecution for admitting to the numerous potentially criminal acts outlined in his records released by HSAGC Chairman Rand Paul–acts which could only be prosecuted in a federal forum.
Oversight Project President Mike Howell:
“As a leader of the free-face movement, which unfortunately was a real thing due to Fauci’s insane dictates like mask-mandates, I feel validation that Fauci was unable to offer a single word in his own defense. That validation is vastly increased by the fact that our work on breaking the “scandal of the century” in the autopen matter has put Fauci in a no-win scenario. Fauci shouldn’t be able to rely on a bogus pardon.”
Scott Mechkowski, Visiting Fellow for Deportation Studies:
“When Dr. Fauci pushed shutdown and mask policies, the fallout didn’t stop at schools and storefronts — it reached straight inside federal law enforcement. That lockdown doctrine became the rationale for turning off interior immigration enforcement: officers who are essential by statute were sent home, at-large operations stopped, and the detained population was cut nearly in half, from roughly 45,000 to 20,000, much of it under a court order the Ninth Circuit later threw out.
People were turned loose onto a docket of 3.26 million with a one-in-three absconder rate and no one left in the field to go get them. Fauci’s advice to the White House didn’t just close Main Street. It dismantled interior immigration enforcement from the inside — and the country is still paying for it.”
###