Fauci Pleads the Fifth | Interview: Elie Honig

Sarah Isgur and David French are joined by CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig to discuss Anthony Fauci’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment. Is it okay? Is it not okay? How does this relate to the pardon power? Then it’s on to a constitutional game show where each member of this three-person team picks two constitutional amendments they would magically ratify and one amendment they would veto. The Agenda: –Amending the Constitution! –Impeachment reform, resizing Congress, and emergency powers –Presidential eligibility, redefining Article II, and repealing the 17th Amendment –We will see a 28th Amendment Show Notes: Sarah Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch and is based in northern Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2019, she had worked in every branch of the federal government and on three presidential campaigns. She’s also a ABC News contributor and the author of Last Branch Standing, a deep dive into the inner workings of the Supreme Court. When Sarah is not hosting podcasts or writing newsletters, she’s probably sending uplifting stories about spiders to Jonah, who only pretends to love all animals. David French is a columnist for the New York Times. He’s a former senior editor of The Dispatch. He’s the author most recently of Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. The podcast transcription below was generated using artificial intelligence and may include occasional errors or misspellings. Music 0:00 [keys jangling] Ready? Music 0:02 I was born ready. Music 0:06 [upbeat music] Sarah Isgur 0:19 Welcome to Advisory Opinions. I'm Sarah Isgur. That's David French. And we have special guest Elie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst, as well as writer at New York Magazine and author of 3 amazing books, Hatchet Man, Untouchable, and When You Come at the King. That last one, by the way, is his most recent one, When You Come at the King: Inside DOJ's Pursuit of the President from Nixon to Trump. And what are we doing today with Elie? I mean, he's a former federal and state prosecutor, and so we've gotta start with the thing we haven't talked about yet on AO because we've been saving it for Elie, Anthony Fauci's invocation of the 5th Amendment. Is it okay? Is it not okay? How does this relate to the pardon power? And that will lead us right in to our constitutional game show where each member of this three-person team was required to pick 2 amendments that they would magically ratify to the Constitution and one amendment that they would veto. There's a theme that's gonna come out of this, at least for mine, Sarah Isgur 1:25 states, federalism. What can we do to rebalance not just the horizontal government, Congress, the president, and the judiciary, what about vertical government, the federal government versus the states? I've got some ideas. Let's go. I wanna talk a little bit about the 5th Amendment. You're a former SDNY guy. You've talked and written quite a bit about the importance of the 5th Amendment and that as a society, we need to stop sort of using this partisan Whac-A-Mole anytime someone on the other side invokes the 5th Amendment as this kind of gotcha. And you did it repeatedly during the 1st Trump administration. You are saying it now in relation to Anthony Fauci. Sing us a few bars of this before I bring the hammer from Michael Dorf at Cornell- Interactive transcripts are available to Premium members. Join to follow along with the audio. Join Now More We Think You’d Like