The amendment also includes a right to due process and protects against being prosecuted twice for the same offense. It has seeped into the culture, too. “Pleading the Fifth” has become an idiom in the United States,

Republicans have argued that the pre-emptive pardon Dr. Fauci received from former President Biden ought to preclude him from invoking the Fifth Amendment. But the pardon applies only to what happened before it was issued.

If Hawley genuinely expects the public to believe that “no honest person pleads the Fifth,” perhaps now is a good time to remind folks that it was around this time four years ago when Donald Trump took the Fifth more than 440 times during a deposition related to the Trump Organization’s allegedly fraudulent business practices.