Trump ‘Respects’ Biden’s Pardon of Fauci After Contentious Senate Hearing

President Donald Trump declared on Wednesday that he “respects” former President Joe Biden’s pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci, following Fauci’s explosive Senate hearing where he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times.

Speaking from the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said he watched all of Fauci’s hearing and insisted the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was not a “big factor” during his administration, but “did not help” when asked about Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) scheduling a vote to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

Trump said:

Well, I watched the whole thing, but more importantly I was a part of the whole Fauci — I inherited Fauci. He was here from the 1980s so I had him for a period of time and I disagreed with him on a lot. I would have had it closed down the whole country if I listened to him. I went the federalist way which is basically let the governors decide. And generally speaking the Republican governors did very well and the Democrat governors did not do very well. But Fauci wanted to have nobody wearing masks if you remember and then everyone had to wear five masks, as many masks as you could get. He made a lot of mistakes. He wasn’t a big factor for me. He was a very big factor for Biden.

The president was then asked by LindellTV’s Cara Castronuova whether he would be open to the Department of Justice opening a new inquiry into Biden’s use of an “autopen” to sign orders, specifically related to Fauci and the Covid pandemic.

Trump — who has pardoned more than 150 people in his second term so far — said he respects the power of the pardon, even Biden’s pardon of Fauci.

“The only thing you can really think about is the auto pen because the most powerful thing the president has they say is the power of pardon so he was pardoned by Biden and I respect that. I know how powerful it is. It’s a very powerful — they say it’s literally the most powerful thing a president has,” he said.

He continued by noting the process of reversing a pardon would be difficult.

“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 also need to have all sorts of things and the person operating the autopen has to know exactly what it’s all about. He didn’t not know what it was about because I saw him testify so maybe there’s something on the autopen. Other than that, the power of pardon is very powerful,” he said.

Watch above via Fox News.

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