Fauci to face Senate grilling after private COVID journals revive lab-leak scandal
The former NIAID chief will testify under subpoena July 29 as Rand Paul presses him on Wuhan research, instructions to delete emails, and whether Americans were misled about COVID-19’s origin.
Dr. Anthony Fauci will return to Capitol Hill under subpoena July 29 for a long-awaited confrontation with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., over the origin of COVID-19 and the federal government’s role in funding risky coronavirus research in Wuhan, China.
Fauci, 85, will be the sole witness at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, scheduled for 8:30 a.m. July 29 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Paul, the committee chairman, issued the subpoena in June after Fauci declined to appear voluntarily.
The hearing follows a flood of document releases from Paul’s investigation, headlined by a 1,141-page collection of Fauci’s pandemic-era journal entries covering January 2020 through December 2022.
On Jan. 26, 2020, Fauci wrote that the Wuhan market was “not the source” of the outbreak but only “the amplifier.” Days later, he wrote that most participants in a conference call with scientists that day thought deliberate insertion of genetic material was involved in the origination of the virus. Participants had also discussed a lab leak as a possible reason for the outbreak.
Fauci later publicly maintained that natural spillover was likely, while acknowledging that nobody could be completely certain and calling for further investigation. Paul argues that Fauci’s public dismissal of many lab-origin claims concealed the seriousness of the early scientific debate.
“What he wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories,” Paul said.
The journals also revive questions about Fauci’s influence over COVID lockdowns and other restrictions. In March 2020, he wrote that he had persuaded New York City Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio to close schools and urged him to close bars and restaurants and pursue a shelter-in-place order. He also wrote that he helped convince President Donald Trump to extend federal COVID rules.
The writings also document Fauci’s intense attention to his sudden celebrity. He tracked television portrayals, celebrity praise, Fauci-themed mask designs, murals, bobbleheads, and even doughnuts bearing his image. In one entry, he called it “not hyperbole” to describe himself as “the most famous and talked about person in the country.”
Fauci-Arranged Funding for Gain-of-Function Research in Wuhan?
The deeper dispute between Paul and Fauci concerns U.S. taxpayer funding that reached the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth Alliance.
In May 2021, Fauci testified that the National Institutes of Health “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research” at the Wuhan lab. A later Government Accountability Office review confirmed that federal funds reached the institute for bat-coronavirus work, and, as Zeale News previously reported, NIH official Lawrence Tabak acknowledged in 2024 that the experiments met a broad, ordinary definition of gain-of-function research.
Fauci maintains that the work did not meet the narrower federal regulatory definition of dangerous gain-of-function research covered by his testimony. He has also said the viruses studied under the grant were too genetically distant from SARS-CoV-2 to have produced the pandemic virus. Paul calls that distinction a semantic evasion.
Federal records are expected to provide another flashpoint. Fauci testified in 2024 that he had not deleted official records or obstructed Freedom of Information Act requests. Paul later released two emails in which Fauci instructed federal colleagues, “Please delete this e-mail after you read it.” Paul said the messages appear to contradict Fauci’s sworn testimony.
The journals also show Fauci communicating with former senior adviser David Morens while critics were examining EcoHealth and Wuhan research. As Zeale News previously reported, the Department of Justice indicted Morens in April on charges alleging that he inappropriately used private email, concealed federal records, and helped EcoHealth evade public scrutiny.
As Zeale News reported at the time, former President Joe Biden gave Fauci a sweeping preemptive pardon before leaving office, covering possible federal offenses connected to his government service from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 20, 2025. Biden said the pardon should not be understood as evidence of wrongdoing.
Paul has emphasized that the pardon cannot protect Fauci from any new false statement made during Wednesday’s testimony.
