- The claim that U.S. President Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to self-incriminate over 400 times in a deposition for his civil fraud case in 2022 was supported by partial and secondhand evidence, but Snopes was unable to access enough primary evidence to definitively rate it.
- The rumor stems from posts defending Dr. Anthony Fauci’s repeated use of the Fifth Amendment in a Senate hearing after Republican attacks suggesting the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director wouldn’t have repeatedly invoked it if he were innocent.
- A judge in the case stated in a motion appointing a court monitor to oversee the Trump family’s businesses that Trump used the Fifth Amendment to refuse to answer questions over 400 times — a claim Trump’s defense team did not appear to dispute. Credible news outlets also reported the number, citing anonymous sources. Trump also has said he used the strategy of invoking the Fifth Amendment to all questions asked in the deposition.
- Despite the credible secondhand reports, Snopes cannot independently verify the number of times Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment because the New York attorney general’s office, which filed the lawsuit in Trump’s civil fraud case, did not release a full transcript or video of the entire deposition. Of the portion it did release, Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to all questions asked, more than 80 times.
In late July 2026, a GOP-led Senate committee questioned Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading face of the U.S. government’s COVID-19 response, over his handling of the pandemic.
Throughout the hearing, Fauci declined to answer by invoking his Fifth Amendment right more than 100 times. The Fifth Amendment protects people from answering self-incriminating questions.
Afterwards, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said (archived), “Innocent people don’t hide behind the Fifth Amendment.”
In an effort to counter Republican criticism of Fauci, some social media users claimed (archived) U.S. President Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment 400-plus times in a single deposition for his 2022 civil fraud lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general’s office.
One Facebook post read:
Hawley may want to workshop this argument before using it again.
During Wednesday’s Senate hearing, Anthony Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer questions.
Hawley then tried asking him deliberately innocuous things: What day is it? What color is your tie? What color is the carpet? Fauci continued to invoke the Fifth.
Hawley turned the exchange into a social-media gotcha, declaring: “Hint for you: no honest person pleads the Fifth.”
There are two problems with that.
First, invoking the Fifth Amendment is a constitutional right—not proof of guilt or dishonesty.
When a witness faces threats of prosecution, lawyers may advise declining to answer across the board rather than litigating, question by question, where the risk of self-incrimination begins.
Asking about the carpet does not magically strip someone of that protection.
Second, Trump invoked the same constitutional right more than 400 times during a single 2022 deposition in the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into his business practices.
He declined to answer questions about property valuations, financial statements and the Trump Organization’s finances.
Over and over, his answer remained the same.
So Hawley has presented us with two possible principles: Invoking the Fifth is a legitimate constitutional protection that does not establish dishonesty. Or: “No honest person pleads the Fifth.”
Republicans cannot treat constitutional rights as proof of guilt when exercised by their political enemies and prudent legal strategy when exercised hundreds of times by their leader.
Either way, Hawley has just made a remarkably concise argument against Trump. Bravo?
People shared the claim online immediately following the hearing, including in other Facebook (archived) posts (archived). Social media users continued to make the claim (archived) the following week (archived), particularly after (archived) the Homeland Security committee held Fauci in contempt of Congress over his refusal to answer its questions.
Snopes readers searched the website and sent us emails asking whether the claim that Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times in his civil fraud case was true.
The available evidence supported the claim. However, Snopes was unable to access the full primary evidence that would allow us to independently confirm the claim, and we are therefore leaving the claim unrated at this time.
In a November 2022 decision to appoint a court monitor to oversee the Trump family businesses during his civil fraud trial, a judge wrote (PDF Page 9) that Trump invoked “his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times in response to questions posed to him during his deposition.” Trump and his defense team did not appear to contest that statement.
Credible news sources reported similarly in August 2022, immediately after Trump’s deposition took place. Referencing sources with knowledge of the deposition, NBC News reported Trump pleaded the Fifth more than 440 times, The Washington Post reported he invoked it more than 400 times and The New York Times also reported he pleaded it more than 400 times.
All three outlets cited anonymous sources for the information. Because Snopes does not rely on anonymous sources, we cannot base a rating on those reports. To rate the claim true, we would need to independently count the number of times Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment in an official transcript or video of the deposition.
The New York attorney general’s office, which interviewed Trump in that deposition and sued him in the civil fraud trial, did not release the entire August 2022 deposition. Snopes reached out to the office by email, which replied with a video that only showed portions of the deposition that were over 30 minutes long, as well as videos of a later Trump interview in which he did answer questions.
The office previously released that 30-minute video of Trump’s August 2022 deposition publicly, and it was first published by CBS News in January 2023. A transcript the attorney general’s office released in court documents omitted the same portions of the deposition that were left out of the video.
In the video, Trump repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer every question asked by the attorney general’s office — which was more than 80 times. Assuming that Trump continued to refuse to answer throughout the hours-long deposition, it’s not hard to imagine he invoked it hundreds of times more. But without the full transcript or a video of the deposition, we’re unable to independently confirm that the total was more than 400.
Before answering questions, Trump read a statement into a record at that deposition. During it, he said (PDF Page 6):
Anyone in my position not taking the Fifth Amendment would be a fool, an absolute fool. One statement or answer that is ever so slightly off, just ever so slightly by accident, by mistake, such as it was a sunny beautiful day, when actually it was slightly overcast, would be met by law enforcement at a level seldom seen in this country, because I’ve experienced it.
[…]
Accordingly, under the advice of my counsel and for all of the above reasons, I respectfully decline to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution. This will be my answer to any further questions.
This isn’t the first time we’ve investigated a claim about Trump and the Fifth Amendment. For example, in 2021 we fact-checked whether he ever said, “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
