Rand Paul: Will The Real Anthony Fauci Please Stand Up?

Now that we have seen the communications and diary of Dr. Anthony Fauci, and we know that his private thoughts on COVID were very different than his public statements, it’s time to ask the question: Will the real Anthony Fauci please stand up?

On July 29, 2026, Fauci stood in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) and swore an oath to tell the truth. It was his chance to set the record straight, to tell us what he actually believes.

But that oath was not fulfilled, and that opportunity was wasted.

Not because he lied to Congress that morning but, rather, because he would not answer a single question posed to him. He refused to give the American people even one answer regarding the origins of COVID; the vaccines he forced upon them; the draconian lockdowns he championed; or the enormous human cost of his actions. He refused to answer the committee or the American people, invoking the Fifth Amendment 111 times.

Instead of cooperation, we are left with contradictions.

First, Fauci repeatedly told the public that COVID came from a wet market. But his diary shows that he knew as early as January 26, 2020, that “the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market.” This is a stunning lie. But it is only the first of many.

He told Congress that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Yet Fauci’s own diary entry of February 1, 2020, recounts that 10 of 12 experts on his call believed accidental release was the most likely source of COVID, and that it was possible “given the fact that Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in GOF in coronaviruses.” He continued, “We could not let this go.”

In 2024, when asked by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic if he had ever deleted documents, he definitively responded, “No.” But my investigation has revealed that he made a habit of it. Fauci told colleagues numerous times to delete their exchanges with him, once telling one of his deputies to “delete this e-mail and [then] delete it from the deleted file.” His assistant once alerted him that she “deleted a ton of [his] emails this morning.” In exchanges regarding the WHO’s response to COVID origins, and in response to my own social media posts questioning his policies, Fauci once again asked colleagues to “please delete this e-mail after you read it.”

Dr. Fauci told that same House subcommittee in a transcribed interview that he “didn’t make a decision to close the schools.” He told the New York Times, “Show me a school that I shut down. Never. I never did.” But his diary betrays these statements. On May 15, 2020, he wrote that he “spoke with Bill de Blasio… and convinced him based on what I was saying publicly and my conversations tonight to close the NYC schools.” The very next day, he wrote that Governor Gavin Newsom’s Chief of Staff had relayed in a phone call “that based on my TV appearances today and yesterday, the Governor has decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants.”

As the 2020 holidays approached, Fauci implored Americans to keep their holiday gatherings “as small as you possibly can” and that you “may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering.” Yet on October 23 of that same year, Fauci wrote in his diary about a dinner in his home “with Jake and Jennifer Tapper.”

Publicly, Fauci stood behind the White House podium and mourned the incredible human loss of the pandemic, while privately stroking his own ego over the attention he received. In the top line of his diary, he would keep tally of the COVID deaths each day. On April 20, 2020, when he listed the deaths of 3,000 parents, friends, and colleagues, he spent the entire entry gushing over the treatment he was receiving from the media and celebrities like Kim Kardashian.

Early in the pandemic, Fauci told the public that masks weren’t necessary to stop the spread of COVID and that they wouldn’t protect anyone, only to later insist on their importance. Fauci himself called this messaging “well meant,” a deception intended to save masks for health workers. But his manipulation of the public, from the very start of the pandemic, also revealed Fauci’s duplicity.

In yet another media profile — this one with Time Magazine in 2021 — Fauci said the COVID pandemic “confirmed what I learned with other outbreaks […] you have to be humble and modest enough to know that you’re learning as you go along.”

If only he had followed his own advice. Instead, he may be reminded of a diary entry from October 2001, in which Fauci wrote: “I believe that there will be hell to pay when the American public realizes that they have not been dealt with in a totally open manner.” 

The American people want answers on the COVID pandemic. This week, Anthony Fauci was given the opportunity to address the American public openly.

He pleaded the Fifth Amendment 111 times.

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U.S. Senator Rand Paul, M.D., (R-KY) is one of the nation’s leading advocates for liberty. Senator Paul serves as the chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He has represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate since 2011. He and his wife, Kelley, live in Bowling Green and are the parents of three sons.