Diary entries, a subpoena and an anticipated clash: Dr. Anthony Fauci and Rand Paul's long-running battle returns to the Hill

Even before the US enacted a national shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci pondered whether he might have testified before Congress more than any other official.

Fauci did not agree to turn up willingly. In June, Paul subpoenaed the 85-year-old former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for his appearance.

Ahead of the hearing, the committee released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci's personal diary from 2019 to 2022. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday night on Fox News that he had recently handed the files over to Paul and Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson after finding them on government servers following an eight-month search.

Paul could attempt to renew calls for perjury charges based on the scientist's remarks in the Wednesday hearing. 'If he lies during the hearing, that's a new lie, and the pardon won't cover that,' Paul said during his interview with Fox Business on July 15.

The article covers: Fauci's 250 prior congressional testimonies; the June subpoena; Fauci's lawyers' letter calling Paul's pronouncements 'absolutely baseless'; the release of 1,100+ pages of diary obtained by HHS Secretary RFK Jr. from government servers; documentation of Fauci's growing fame and celebrity interactions (Kim Kardashian, Barbra Streisand, Tyra Banks, Michael Jordan); his internal criticism of Trump ('Trump getting out of control in pushing to open up the country'); Fauci's July 2021 diary entry that it was 'molecularly impossible' for NIH grant-funded Wuhan research to have created SARS-CoV-2; Paul's expectation that the pardon won't cover new lies; and Sen. Ron Johnson's comment: '(I) don't expect to get much out of him. But I'm going to try and lay out all the things that he did that were such a miserably failed response to Covid.'