Fauci Diaries Spark Senate Hearing
Anthony Fauci«s personal diaries, made public in the United States, caused the effect of a small but noticeable bomb. Their appearance fueled Senate investigations, an exchange of accusations between politicians, and discussion about the origins of the coronavirus. Senator Rand Paul published more than a thousand pages of notes from the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and stated that Fauci»s public statements contained more politics than medicine.
How the diaries became a weapon
On July 25, 2026, Rand Paul posted Fauci«s personal notes, obtained from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy had purposefully searched for government documents about the pandemic and discovered 1,141 pages on eleven different servers; the notes cover December 2019 through December 2022.
Different groups perceived the find in their own way: supporters of conspiracy theories saw confirmation of their theories, while Democratic Party representatives explained the discrepancies between Fauci«s words and actions as peculiarities of the job. According to American media, it was precisely these materials that caused the Senate hearings.
The Senate show
At the July 29 hearing, Fauci, answering questions, repeated the same phrase 111 times: “On the advice of my lawyers, I respectfully decline to answer, invoking the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.” Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri tried to play on this: “Like using the Fifth Amendment, doctor? Let«s try something. What day of the week is it today? Tell me, what color is your tie? What color is the carpet in front of you?” Each time the answer was the same.
Hawley claimed that the Fifth Amendment could not apply to Fauci because he had been pardoned. Outgoing President Joe Biden pardoned him for his work as a federal employee in 2014–2025. However, lawyers consider the senator«s position mistaken: in federal court, invoking the Fifth Amendment remains permissible, although the risk of prosecution at the state level has not gone away. After the hearing, the Florida Attorney General announced the launch of an investigation into Fauci. Senator Tuberville, who is seeking the governorship of Alabama, promised that Fauci would face a court and jury in that state. Therefore, refusing to answer Congress was probably a deliberate step — property lawsuits may also lie ahead.
Money, awards, and bureaucratic resources
Hawley accused Fauci of getting rich during the pandemic “while more than a million Americans were dying.” According to the senator, the doctor used federal employees from his own office as a machine for submitting applications for awards from private and state organizations.
The result was the $1 million Dan David Prize and eight other awards, although American civil servants are prohibited from nominating themselves for such prizes. Investigators focused on possible illicit enrichment, while the attention of the press and bloggers is riveted on other pages of the diary — lockdowns, masks, vaccines, and the origin of the virus.
Wuhan and discrepancies
Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, has long argued with Fauci about where the coronavirus came from. In the notes, he seeks confirmation of the theory of a leak from the Wuhan laboratory.
Critics claim they found contradictions in the diary. In early 2020, Fauci denied in the notes that the market in Wuhan was the primary source, calling it merely an amplifier of spread and referring to intelligence data about experiments in the local laboratory. Publicly, he defended the theory of the virus«s natural origin and explained its mutation as a jump from animal to human.
Shortly before leaving office, Tulsi Gabbard«s Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a press statement with declassified materials about the origins of COVID-19. They reportedly revealed a connection between U.S.-funded research, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the actions of former U.S. Surgeon General Anthony Fauci. It was also noted that some documents contradict his 2024 congressional testimony.
Lockdowns and schools
At the end of 2022, Fauci assured Congress that he had nothing to do with closing schools, bars, and restaurants and did not lobby for lockdowns. In the diary, however, he recorded how he recommended that the governor of Virginia and the governor of California close schools, and that the mayor of New York also close bars, restaurants, and other public places.
Judging by the notes, during Trump«s presidency Fauci effectively controlled the epidemiological situation in the country; at the same time, he believed that Trump had no particular desire to fight the virus.
Masks, vaccines, and boosters
Fauci«s attitude toward masks changed publicly. Until September 2020, he explained the absence of recommendations by saying that asymptomatic transmission was not known, and later he insisted on their necessity. In the diary, however, it says that he received information about asymptomatic transmission from Chinese authorities at the very beginning of the epidemic. And after the first recorded case of such transmission in the U.S. in 2020, an entry appeared in all caps: “THE GAME IS ON, THE VIRUS IS MUTATING RAPIDLY, THE VIRUS IS TRANSMITTED TO PEOPLE WITHOUT SYMPTOMS.”
A similar story with vaccines. Three drugs were created in the U.S. — Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. When doubts arose in February 2021 about the effectiveness of Johnson & Johnson, Fauci publicly called all three vaccines highly effective. In his personal notes he wrote: “The effectiveness of Johnson & Johnson for people over 60 is 42%. Rochelle Walensky and I decided that we would tell the press that this vaccine is as effective as the other two.”
With CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, Fauci also agreed not to report doubts about the effectiveness of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and boosters. In the diary he lamented: “If we are too frank in our messages about what we really know, we will be called to account, so we cannot publish these data.”
Trump, stars, and Fauci«s fear
In public, next to Donald Trump during his first term, Fauci looked like part of a united team, but the 2020 diaries contain disparaging assessments of the president. By the end of the term, the relationship had cracked: Fauci wrote that during a nighttime call he tried to convince Trump not to downplay the danger, and in May 2020 that the president was “getting out of control,” sought to open the country and restore the economy before the election, and was “talking complete nonsense” during the campaign.
Critics, however, were more offended by how Fauci recorded his own success. In the diary he listed meetings with Barbra Streisand, Serena Williams, Clive Davis, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Francis Ford Coppola. One entry almost literally describes the moment of his own ascent: “It would not be an exaggeration to say that today I am the most famous and discussed person in the country and one of the most recognizable people in the world.”
In the American press, the diary was called a black comedy of manners: the 79-year-old scientist sought career advancement, became the face of the government«s pandemic response, and then a universal favorite, and the more victims there were, the louder the story of his success sounded.
Fauci himself, however, understood the risk of infection perfectly well. “Tomorrow I have to go to an even more pompous reception at the French ambassador«s residence. I think I will decline, because I don»t want to experience again what I experienced last night — the fear of getting infected,” he explained in one of the entries.
According to American media, the Senate planned this week to hold a vote on whether Fauci was in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions.
