Fauci diaries, released by Sen. Rand Paul, touch on COVID origins and tense relationship with Trump

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has released more than a thousand pages of journal entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci, teeing up what is likely to be a contentious hearing with the nation's former top infectious disease expert on Wednesday about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paul on Monday accused Fauci of saying one thing to 'Dear Diary' while telling the public 'it's implausible that it came from the lab, and we're really convinced it came from these wild animals in the marketplace. But that level of dishonesty is really astounding.'

In a July 20, 2021, entry, Fauci recounted his appearance before a Senate committee in which he clashed with Paul over whether the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research at the lab. Paul accused Fauci of lying about it in previous congressional testimony. Fauci countered that the research Paul was referring to did not constitute gain of function. 'I finished by looking him in the eye and telling him that if anybody is lying here it is he,' Fauci wrote.

It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson [sic] in the world,' Fauci wrote in a May 21, 2020, entry. 'POTUS seems to be enamored of me even though I am taking the spotlight away from him.'

Full body retrieved. The article covers: the hearing set for Wednesday; the Jan. 2020 diary entry about the market not being the source but an amplifier; the May 26, 2021 entry on 'flip flopping' about the virus origin; Fauci's 'cult hero'-style fandom; his interactions with Trump including Trump saying 'Tony, you are losing me trillions of f***ing dollars'; Fauci calling Trump an 'idiot' for posting inaccurate COVID death figures.