Key players in the drama this week over Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal journal are declining to provide basic details about the origins of the records and how they came to be made public.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is giving conflicting information about the journal entries, which became front-page news ahead of Fauci’s high-profile Senate hearing six years after the pandemic began. The agency has not responded to requests for clarification.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), which made the documents public, has also not responded to multiple requests for information about how it obtained them.
Similarly, Fauci’s representatives declined to answer the Washington Examiner‘s questions about the records.
The lack of information has kept the public uninformed about the exact provenance of the detailed accounts that Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, kept about his media appearances and first-person thoughts during the darkest days of the pandemic. The release of the records drove renewed interest in accountability for the pandemic policies that Fauci helped implement and gave life to Paul’s investigation into whether Fauci covered up his agency’s alleged funding of dangerous viral research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
The background
Nearly 1,600 pages of first-person diary entries from Fauci were made public earlier this week by Paul in the lead-up to the former top doctor’s latest appearance before the homeland security committee.
The first trove of records, published by Paul on July 25, began with entries from December 2019, when SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was discovered in China. They extended to Fauci’s retirement from public office in December 2022.
The second and less publicized records, released by Paul on July 27, were started in April 2001 as a record of Fauci’s continued work on the AIDS epidemic and the creation of what would become the PEPFAR program, a crown jewel of U.S. international public health aid. The second document, which Paul labeled as “The Prequel” on his website, included entries that ended in July 2015.
Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, declined multiple requests for comment from the Washington Examiner regarding the diaries.
What are the ‘diaries?’
It is not clear how or why Fauci kept the records that were made public.
They were entered at some point into government servers, which allowed GOP investigators to access them, yet both Paul and Fauci described them as personal diary entries.
The entries contain information about Fauci’s schedule and his media appearances, as well as other basic information that might well be part of official business. But they also include his interior thoughts, opinions, and other material that is clearly personal in nature.
Fauci, in his opening statement in the hearing on Wednesday, acknowledged the legitimacy of the diaries, saying Paul’s act of “publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me” led him to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
It is also not clear why there is a gap in the documentation from 2015 to 2019.
How were the diaries obtained?
Multiple people familiar with the diaries have publicly said and confirmed to the Washington Examiner that they were kept on HHS servers and, as such, are federal government property rather than Fauci’s personal property. But it is unclear who at HHS discovered the diaries or why they were not made public during the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s 2023 investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
Kennedy himself has given two different accounts of how the diaries made it into the congressional record.
The secretary said during an interview with Laura Ingraham on July 27 that his team took several months to find the diaries spread across different computer servers at HHS before handing them over to the Senate.
“It took us about eight months to dig these out of 11 separate servers where they had been sequestered and secreted,” Kennedy said. “And we handed them over this week to Rand Paul and Ron Johnson because they already have ongoing investigations and should see this.”
But on July 30, the day after the hearing, Kennedy appeared on conservative pundit Glenn Beck’s radio show, saying that the diary was discovered as part of the thousands of emails that were subpoenaed by Paul’s committee.
“He was keeping a diary for the book that he intended to write about his life, and at the end of his term, just before he was leaving, he emailed the entire diary to himself,” Kennedy said, noting that they were able to find the document by searching the former NIAID director’s emails.
When asked for more details about HHS’s discovery of the diaries, a spokesperson for the Department told the Washington Examiner that they were given in response to Paul’s requests for records.
“HHS collected, searched, and produced government records from a server containing Dr. Fauci’s emails and other official files in response to Senator Rand Paul’s oversight request,” the department spokesperson said. “These were government records — not private records. HHS created and maintained them on a government server, making them subject to oversight and transparency under applicable law.”
Spokespeople for the Senate homeland security committee have not answered the Washington Examiner’s questions about how exactly the documents came into Paul’s possession.
Fauci’s background with record-keeping
Government records preservation was not NIAID’s strong suit during Fauci’s nearly 40-year tenure as director.
Dr. David Morens, a former top-level assistant for scientific research for Fauci, was indicted in April for allegedly concealing information, falsifying records, and destroying evidence related to U.S.-funded research grants for coronavirus projects at the Wuhan lab.
But if Fauci’s diaries were found through a subpoena of email records, then they should have been made available during the House investigation into the origins of COVID-19, which was led by Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) and Ohio GOP Rep. Brad Wenstrup.
House oversight committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), in reaction to the diaries and Fauci’s silence on Wednesday, blamed former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra for concealing the former NIAID director’s diaries.
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“Based on the release of Dr. Fauci’s diary, which should have been provided to the House Oversight Committee last Congress but was withheld by then-HHS Secretary Becerra, we’ll be asking Dr. Fauci whether he stands by his previous testimony to our Committee,” Comer said. “Dr. Fauci’s actions and lies caused irreparable harm to Americans and he must face accountability.”
The Washington Examiner contacted Becerra’s team with a request for comment.