President Trump has a habit of saying things that sound outrageous in the moment and turn out to be legally significant in hindsight. His response to Fauci’s 111 Fifth Amendment invocations may be one of those moments.
Asked about Biden’s preemptive pardon of Fauci — the one that Fauci himself is apparently relying on as a shield against congressional testimony — Trump didn’t offer the expected outrage. He offered something considerably more useful: doubt about whether the pardon is even valid.
“He was pardoned by Biden, and I respect that,” Trump said. “I know how powerful it is.” Then came the pivot: “The only thing I know that he signed was Hunter Biden’s pardon, but I’m not sure that he signed — he probably didn’t sign this one. 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 that the person operating the autopen has to know exactly what it’s all about. He didn’t know what it was about.”
WATCH:
lol of course Trump is pro-pardon: “Fauci was pardoned by Biden, and I respect that” pic.twitter.com/ojqvSjUhtB
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 29, 2026
This is not a throwaway comment. It’s a direct signal about the legal strategy Trump’s DOJ may be preparing to deploy — the same strategy that legal scholars, former DOJ prosecutors, and the House Oversight Committee have already identified as viable.
Biden’s final days in office were chaotic. The autopen — a machine that replicates a signature — was used to sign dozens of pardons for people Biden likely never reviewed, possibly never even knew about, and almost certainly couldn’t have coherently explained. A valid presidential pardon is a personal act of executive clemency. The Constitution vests that power in the president himself. If Biden wasn’t mentally present for the Fauci pardon — and based on the Hur audio recordings now being released, his mental capacity in 2024 was severely compromised — the pardon’s constitutional validity is genuinely contestable.
Rep. James Comer’s statement after the hearing added the necessary legal framing:
Dr. Fauci is trapped by the many lies he repeatedly told the American public. If former President Biden’s blanket autopen pardon is valid, then Dr. Fauci has no right to refuse to answer questions. The Oversight Committee exposed how the Biden White House abused the autopen, and any actions taken without clear authorization should be deemed null and void. Dr. Fauci clearly knows his autopen pardon is on legally questionable grounds and decided to protect himself today rather than provide the truth to the American people.
Based on the release of Dr. Fauci’s diary, which should have been provided to the House Oversight Committee last Congress but was withheld by then-HHS Secretary Becerra, we’ll be asking Dr. Fauci whether he stands by his previous testimony to our Committee. Dr. Fauci’s actions and lies caused irreparable harm to Americans, and he must face accountability.
Trump also addressed Fauci’s actual pandemic record — the mask reversals, the school closures, the lockdowns, the decisions that killed small businesses and devastated children’s education while Fauci catalogued his own celebrity in a private diary. “Far fewer people died in the Trump administration than in the Biden administration,” Trump noted. Accurate. Documented. Ignored by the same press that made Fauci a saint.
The contempt vote comes next week. The autopen question is now squarely in the public conversation. Florida has opened a state investigation. And Biden’s pardon machine is looking considerably less bulletproof than it did in January.
Trump said he doesn’t know exactly what the law is. His DOJ is about to find out.
