No Sentence At All

Anthony Fauci took the Fifth today, refusing to answer Rand Paul’s committee on whether he funded the research that triggered the pandemic and lied about it to Congress. I’ve spent this month admiring the careful non-answer: “no direct line can be drawn,” a subpoena withdrawn but never explained, a resolution that passes twice and changes nothing. Those are sentences built to sound like they said something while saying nothing. Fauci’s move is the same target, opposite technique. No sentence at all.

The Fifth Amendment is legally neutral. You’re not supposed to read guilt into someone invoking it, that’s the whole point of the protection. But nobody actually treats it that way, including, I’d guess, the person invoking it. Refusing to answer under oath isn’t a “no,” and it isn’t a confession either. It just moves the question into the gap between what was asked and whatever the record eventually shows. The man who spent five years testifying, writing, explaining, at every microphone that would have him, goes quiet at the one moment someone’s asking under penalty of perjury. Make of it what you will, just don’t make it under oath.

Meanwhile CNN has a poll out today: most Americans think an aging Congress is a problem. Normally that’s an abstract complaint about actuarial tables. This month it wasn’t abstract. It was Lindsey Graham’s actual aorta and Mitch McConnell actually unconscious somewhere on Capitol Hill. You don’t need a poll to notice a body failing in real time. You just need to have been reading the news.