Dr. Anthony Fauci is set to testify Wednesday morning before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who heads the committee, subpoenaed the former White House medical adviser after Fauci first agreed to appear and then refused to testify.
The hearing is expected to focus on the origins of COVID-19, federal funding for gain-of-function research, Fauci’s past statements to Congress, his preemptive presidential pardon from then-President Joe Biden, and his handling of the federal government’s response to the pandemic.
It’s expected that many of the questions asked during the hearing will be colored by Fauci’s explosive diary entries, which were maintained on government servers and recently released by Sen. Paul. The entries detail Fauci’s private thoughts and knowledge — often in sharp contrast to his public messaging — including the origins of the virus, his feelings about different political figures, such as President Donald Trump, and his fierce obsession with media attention, celebrities, and fame.
Read the full diary, below:
For example, in January 2020 Fauci wrote that “we know the market was not the source” of the outbreak, privately indicating that he believed the Wuhan wet market was not where the outbreak started. Yet publicly, Fauci repeatedly suggested the wet-market theory was accurate.
Numerous entries also detail how much positive press Fauci was receiving from the media and celebrities. “Press still hot and heavy about me,” Fauci wrote in April 2020. “Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me.” Weeks later, he celebrated a “very flattering” front-page article about himself in The Washington Post, adding, “The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable [person] in the world.”
In his diaries, Fauci also wrote negatively of President Trump and Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, the first governor in the nation to buck Fauci’s advice about shutting down daily life to “stop the spread.” On Trump, Fauci penned that the president was “truly an obnoxious adolescent.” Another entry read, “He is embarrassing the USA. However, 72,000,000 voted for him. Difficult to understand. Craziness has overtaken part of our country.”
Fauci called DeSantis “a complete disgrace,” adding, “He is blocking the local authorities from mandating masks in various locations including schools. He is doing this while at the same time Florida is virtually on fire with surging cases.”
Additionally, the health advisor appeared to take credit for influencing school closures. In one March 2020 entry, Fauci wrote that he had “convinced” then-New York City Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the city’s schools and that California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom also decided to close schools based on what Fauci was saying publicly. Those entries stand in contrast to Fauci’s later public statements that he did not close schools or advocate for lockdowns.
The diary entries also seem to highlight Fauci’s unwillingness to be transparent and honest with the American people when it comes to the effectiveness and risks of the COVID vaccines. Fauci said in the diary that he experienced a pulmonary infection and contracted COVID on multiple occasions despite his very public show of being vaccinated and receiving multiple booster shots. Those health episodes were not publicly disclosed at the time.
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