Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, was the face and voice of the COVID pandemic response from 2020 to 2022 until his retirement from his position as the highest-paid federal official. He was valorized as the science itself. Then he was then appointed Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine and McCourt School of Public Policy and Distinguished Senior Scholar at Georgetown’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.
That said, controversy has followed him since he came to public attention with the 1980s AIDS epidemic and then with the COVID policy response. You might be surprised to learn that he was never appointed the official spokesman or even the head of the COVID pandemic response. He was one of many members of the Coronavirus Task Force but it was he who nonetheless took the lead on public messaging for those critical two and a half years.
Though he had never been formally accused, much less convicted, of any crime, Fauci received a preemptive full and unconditional pardon from President Joe Biden on Jan. 19, 2025. It was one of Biden’s final acts before leaving office. The pardon covers “any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon.”
Sen. Rand Paul tangled often during those years with Fauci in the Senate. As a medical doctor with training in infectious disease, and also a person with a deep commitment to Constitutional government, Paul was one of the few members of Congress in a position to go toe-to-toe with Fauci. Any possible perjury—of which Paul has long accused him—in those testimonies was preemptively forgiven by Biden.
Each day, we are getting a steady stream of releases and summaries, with pages in the thousands from the millions of documents that Paul’s staff has gone through over these intervening years and now released to the public.
The flurry of releases has been so overwhelming, you can be forgiven for feeling lost among the thicket, especially since only The Epoch Times among major media sources seems to be covering them. The rest of the media that once celebrated Fauci seem to have fallen silent.
A central pillar of Paul’s revelations concern the 2018 DEFUSE proposal, submitted by EcoHealth Alliance (led by Peter Daszak) in partnership with the WIV and the University of North Carolina’s Ralph Baric. This DARPA-funded bid sought to insert a furin cleavage site (FCS) into bat coronaviruses to create chimeric viruses capable of infecting human cells more efficiently.
The FCS is a rare genetic feature in SARS-CoV-2 that enhances its transmissibility in humans. Documents obtained by Paul show that at least 15 federal agencies knew about this proposal during a DARPA “PREEMPT Proposers Day.”
Despite the striking similarity to SARS-CoV-2’s features, none publicly connected it to the emerging pandemic in early 2020. Paul has repeatedly questioned why this wasn’t flagged as a potential biosafety risk, especially given NIH funding flows to EcoHealth and the WIV for coronavirus research.
DARPA rejected DEFUSE over safety concerns, but Paul says related work may have continued under other funding. Baric, interviewed by Paul’s staff in April 2026, confirmed his role in FCS insertion techniques and ran experiments undercutting natural-origin arguments. He could not fully explain his participation in a key Feb. 1, 2020, call with Fauci, Francis Collins of NIH, Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust (and now the WHO), and Proximal Origin authors.
This was a crucial day in the timeline. The news coming out of China was of a killer virus, prompting lockdowns in Wuhan and elsewhere. We know from Farrar’s own book that they were terrified of being blamed for causing a global pandemic. They went to burner phones and secret video calls, the Feb. 1 call among them. That Baric was included—a detail we had not known—is revealing in itself.
Paul’s July 2026 release of Slack messages from authors (including Kristian Andersen and Eddie Holmes) reveals private skepticism. Andersen described a bat virus with an FCS in Wuhan as “very striking.” He assigned ~30 percent odds to a lab leak; Holmes ~20 percent (later 10 percent). As DEFUSE details leaked, participants discussed staying “off email,” “carefully curating” messages for FOIA, and distancing themselves from involved parties.
Paul accuses these scientists of downplaying lab-leak evidence publicly while privately weighing it, with NIH promoting the paper. This ties into allegations that Fauci, Collins, and Farrar prompted the paper to counter lab-origin discussions, for which the authors were subsequently rewarded with grant continuations.
Among the many revelations in Paul’s files are that Fauci’s aide David Morens used personal email for “damage control” with Daszak. We now have evidence that Fauci directed Andersen to report FCS concerns to FBI/MI5 while shaping public messaging. We have records of Fauci’s long ties to intelligence (back to 2003), including briefings, which Paul says influenced origins assessments.
In January 2025, Paul issued subpoenas to 14 agencies (NIH, FBI, CIA, DOE, etc.) for records on GoF oversight and origins, citing years of stonewalling and redactions. He highlights the bypassed P3CO safety review for WIV projects.
Then we have Paul’s May 2026 hearing featuring CIA officer Jim Erdman III, who alleged a multi-agency coverup. Erdman claimed leadership rejected lab-leak evidence, altered conclusions, and concealed truths from the public—an ongoing “deep state” effort.
Among other points in the reading room: FBI blocked Customs and Border Patrol from questioning/searching Daszak upon return from a WHO mission, a Marine Corps DARPA fellow’s memo linking a 2018 proposal to SARS-CoV-2 origins, and directly accusing U.S. officials of involvement, and CIA/ODNI contacts with Baric pre-pandemic.
Paul’s probe extends beyond origins to the pandemic response—school closures’ harms, nursing home policies, business closures, made-up measures like six feet of distance, vaccine mandates, and broad censorship of dissenting views. He ties this to a lack of oversight on high-risk research.
Paul’s releases include explosive elements: Scientists coordinating to avoid scrutiny, agencies allegedly burying evidence, Daszak/EcoHealth’s central role despite conflicts, and claims SARS-CoV-2 resembles an “American-created recombinant bat vaccine” precursor, in the words of one whistleblower.
Fauci has long experience with testimonies and depositions. In a two-day transcribed interview with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in January 2024, Fauci responded with variations of “I don’t recall,” “I do not recall,” or similar phrases more than 100 times. In another case from a 2022 censorship lawsuit, Fauci was deposed and responded “I don’t recall” (or nearly identical phrasing) approximately 174 times.
Fauci has been pardoned for actions before Jan. 19, 2025 but remains vulnerable to a perjury charge in the upcoming Senate hearing. It’s reasonable to predict the most serious case of amnesia to date. I would not try a drinking game for every time he says “I don’t recall” this time around.
