100 TIMES THE FIFTH: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s former infectious disease expert who led the fight against Covid, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination yesterday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee after charging that Chairman Rand Paul intended to steer him into criminal perjury.

  Fauci accused the Kentucky senator of having an “unhinged obsession with me.”

  Paul then engaged in indictment by question as he posited unproved theories about the origin of Covid in a Wuhan, China laboratory funded in part … he claims … by the National Institutes of Health under Fauci’s supervision. Fauci pleaded the Fifth more than 100 times to senators of both parties. His lawyer was thrown out for trying to speak.

  It was not a hearing to find facts but to prove Republican belief that health measures damaged the country and Fauci bore responsibility for the inception of the disease. Paul in his opening said the Covid lockdown “could never have been inflicted without you aiding and abetting the crime.”

  Fauci in his opening  referred to Paul saying, “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

  While the Democrats asked friendly questions that also went unanswered, the Republicans hammered away, blaming Fauci for the pandemic and shifting information about how to deal with it. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri asked what day of the week it is and what color tie you are wearing, forcing Fauci to continue taking the Fifth.

  Sen. Rick Scott of Florida charged that, “You forced people to watch their loved ones die alone over the phone.”

  Paul threatened Fauci with prosecution for not cooperating. President Joe Biden protected Fauci from the Republicans  with a preemptive pardon Fauci for anything he might have done leading up to the moment of the pardon. Fauci took the Fifth yesterday to protect himself from anything he might be accused of doing or saying in that hearing.

MISSILE MESSAGES: The Middle East is on the brink of even wider war as Egypt reports a drone attack on one of its ports. Jordan says it has shot down missiles coming from Iran.

  US Central Command says today that they completed another “heavy wave” of strikes on Iranian targets overnight. 

WHAT GOES AROUND: The confirmation of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to be attorney general is in jeopardy as two lame-duck Republican senators opposed for re-election by Donald Trump refuse to commit their votes.

  Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina are holding out for Blanche to commit on paper to kill the $1.8 billion compensation fund for  purported victims of Biden-era prosecution that was part of his settlement of the President’s lawsuit against the IRS for leaking his tax returns.  

THE WAR ROOM: Senior Ukraine official Sergiy Kyslytsya told NPR that Ukraine has “the upper hand” against Russia in its war of invasion. “It is a war of the 21st century,” Kyslytsya said. “And we have the upper hand.”

  He said that despite the stalemate, “Dialogue is active and ongoing.”

  Russia is insisting on what’s called the “3+2” proposal in which the war would end with the three regions it currently occupies plus two which it partially holds. 

  Ukraine in recent months has gone on the offense, taking the war into Russia with long-range drones hitting Russian oil and gas facilities, causing fuel shortages, making the civilian population feel the discomfort. Kyslytsya said, “Sooner or later, the Russian leader would have only one choice: to sit down and discuss how to stop this war.”

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— Secret Service agents who questioned former FBI director James Comey were told to send a written summary of their interview to President Trump on Air Force One, indicating the President’s close supervision of the DOJ,  according to a court filing by Comey’s lawyers seeking to dismiss the criminal charges over his social media post showing shells arranged on a beach saying, “86 47,” a reference to ejecting the 47th President.

— President Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn the $83 million defamation judgement against him awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll, who had accused him of rape.  Trump’s filing claims that the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision granting presidents sweeping immunity shields him from liability.

  Responding to Carroll’s claim in 2019 while he was President, Trump denied the assault and said Carroll is “not my type.” The judgement against Trump was awarded in 2024 when he was not President.

THE SPIN RACK: The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged yesterday despite rising inflation. — Former MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia married Brian Glenn, the reporter from Real America’s Voice who asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office why he wasn’t wearing a suit. The marriage took place in Las Vegas, but won’t stay in Vegas.

THE OBIT PAGE: Irish singer and songwriter Glen Hansard, who won an Oscar for the song “Falling Slowly” from the 2007 movie Once, was killed yesterday in a single-vehicle motorcycle crash in Dublin. He was 56.

  In the movie, Hansard plays a vacuum repairman who moonlights as a street musician and meets a Czech immigrant played by Marketa Irglova, who is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. It’s a story of musical creation and unrequited love.

  Hansard was considered part of the bedrock of modern Irish music. He rose to notice as guitar player Outspan Foster in the 1991 film, The Commitments.

  Hansard and Irglova met when she was 13 and later became a romantic couple for two years. He was 18 years older. 

BELOW THE FOLD: President Trump posted, “Does anybody have any idea how much Money and Prestige the United States Supreme Court has cost our Nation with their negative Rulings on Birthright Citizenship and TARIFFS? The answer, TRILLIONS AND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS!”