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Fauci to Testify About COVID Pandemic: What His Diaries Reveal

Newsweek · back to the audit
Anthony Fauci is set to testify before the Senate this week about the federal government's response to COVID-19. Ahead of the hearing, thousands of pages of diary entries released by Senator Rand Paul's office provide a behind-the-scenes account of the pandemic's earliest months, revealing private debates about the virus's origins, concerns about President Donald Trump's public messaging and sharp disagreements inside the government response. One of the most consequential sections of the diary concerns the origins of COVID-19. In a January 31, 2020 entry, Fauci wrote that Jeremy Farrar, then director of the Wellcome Trust, and several scientists had raised concerns about parts of the virus they believed warranted closer scrutiny. "They bring up the possibility that this could have been deliberately inserted and either accidentally released or deliberately released by a crazy person in the lab," Fauci wrote. The diaries also show that officials were divided over how aggressively to restrict travel from China. On January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote that White House officials were pushing "to close the borders for any traffic from China," adding: "Bob and I are against that." One of the most politically significant themes is Fauci's concern that public health messaging was not keeping pace with the threat. As early as January 22, 2020, Fauci wrote: "Let us see if this pits me against the POTUS." In a February 27, 2020 entry, Fauci recounted a lengthy phone call with Trump in which he urged the president not to minimize the outbreak. "I encouraged him not to underplay the seriousness of the situation," Fauci wrote. Privately, however, Fauci's diary describes a considerably warmer relationship during the outbreak's early months. In one January 2020 entry, Fauci recalled Trump praising him during a White House meeting. "Anthony, you are really a famous guy," Trump told him. Fauci is scheduled to appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, July 29.