Four years ago, some Democrats mocked Donald Trump when he took the Fifth and they claimed his invocation was as good as an admission of guilt.

The then-former (and future) president faced questioning under oath at a deposition by New York State attorney general Letitia James —who had promised during her campaign, before she had seen any actual evidence, that Trump had “engaged in a pattern and practice of money laundering” and “can be indicted for criminal offenses.” Accordingly, Trump chose to invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Trump certainly was guilty of aggravated hypocrisy in the first degree; he had previously declared that “the mob takes the Fifth” and “if you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” But when his own liberty interests were on the line, glibness yielded to practicality. “Anyone in my position not taking the Fifth Amendment would be a fool, an absolute fool,” Trump testified — quite sensibly, given James’s stated intent to take him down.

Since then, a parade of prominent officials favored by Democrats have taken the Fifth, and suddenly the invocation of a constitutional right isn’t such a cause for ridicule. Two senior members of Jack Smith’s prosecution team, Jay Bratt and Thomas Windom, invoked their right against self-incrimination when questioned by the House Judiciary Committee. (Smith declined to take the Fifth and testified at length, which resulted in a baseless criminal referral to the Justice Department for a potential perjury prosecution.) Senior aides to Joe and Jill Biden, including former White House deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, invoked their Fifth Amendment rights when subpoenaed by the House in an investigation of the former president’s mental acuity. And now, Dr. Anthony Fauci has joined their ranks.

At a wild Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing last week, Fauci took the Fifth more than 100 times on everything from his views on........

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