It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked-about person in the country and one of the most recognizable people in the world.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, (May 2020 diary entry)
On Wednesday, I watched Anthony Fauci implicitly confess to lying about the origins of COVID, the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, and the risks of the vaccines he pushed on his fellow Americans. After reading his personal diary and presidential pardon, I know why he hid behind the 5th for three hours. Guilt! Even liberal TV host Bill Maher agreed: “Fauci was caught in actual lies… and he knew better because we have him in his diary telling us what he was saying to others… it was ridiculous!”
The damage caused by Dr. Fauci is immeasurable: lockdowns lowering economic output by over $2 trillion, displaced workers losing trillions more in the future earnings, and prolonged school closures forfeiting trillions more in educational value. Thanks to Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) release of Fauci’s internal emails and personal diary, clear-eyed Americans can now see that Fauci obscured the truth, profited from the crisis, and basked in fleeting fame — three deadly sins, all confirmed in his own hand.
Sin One: Obscuring the Truth
Start with the origins of the virus, the subject on which he and Paul have clashed most bitterly. Fauci’s own diary shows that on a February 2020 conference call, 10 of 12 scientists told him deliberate insertion of the virus was on the table — with the two dissenters carrying ties to Wuhan that would have proven awkward had a lab origin been confirmed. Within days, the “natural origin” consensus he later sold to the country and Congress had congealed. Government records show Fauci helped oversee federal funding for risky coronavirus research in Wuhan, and that he used his authority to bury the lab-leak possibility while promoting the alternative.
The pattern repeats on lethality. “Tom Frieden called me this AM,” Fauci wrote on Feb. 8, 2020, “and we discussed various aspects of the outbreak. He and I are on the same page in thinking that this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility.” A month later, on March 11, 2020, Fauci testified to Congress that COVID’s mortality rate was “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.” Private candor, public alarm — the two never matched. Nor did his account of who closed the country.
His diary describes convincing Mayor de Blasio to shut New York City’s schools, with de Blasio “agreeing he would base this on my recommendation,” and a parallel call in which Gov. Newsom’s office agreed to close California’s schools, bars, and restaurants. Yet, in January 2024 and under oath, he told Congress: “I have often said we need to open up the schools as quickly and as safely as possible, and I must have said that 500 times on TV.”
Hmm…on Friday, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s own COVID coordinator, confirmed that “over-closing” was politically motivated: “It was a presidential election year. It was really important for blue states to show that they were taking this very seriously, and they over-closed.”
Which brings us back to Wednesday. A man who pleads the Fifth 111 times is not protecting himself from ambiguity. He’s protecting himself from his own diary.
Sin Two: Profiting While Millions Suffer
While lockdowns cost ordinary Americans their businesses, their jobs, and their children’s education, Fauci did just fine. He was the highest-paid employee in the federal government, drawing an annual salary north of $480,000, and now collects a taxpayer-funded pension of roughly $400,000 a year. His household net worth climbed past $15 million during the very years millions of Americans were sliding into financial distress.
Internal emails show NIH staff coordinating ethics clearances so Fauci could accept lucrative private prizes, such as the $1 million award from Israel’s Dan David Prize for “defending science.” The optics are awful: Fauci profited AND proclaimed his altruistic service, while 1.6 million businesses were closed, with 200,000 never to re-open (source: BLS), 60 million workers lost hours and/or jobs (source: USCB), and 75 million students learned less (source: NCES).
Sin Three: Selling Out to Fleeting Fame
The diary reads less like a public-health record than a scrapbook. “Big front-page article about me appeared in the Washington Post…very flattering…my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable.” Elsewhere: nurses “squealing and laughing and clapping” and “many print profiles and features on me…too many to count” and a boast that he was “a valued spokesperson and a good communicator.” Bill Maher called it the “most embarrassing” celebrity self-portrait “since Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal,” adding: “This kind of stuff is dangerous because he was having his ass kissed by one side in the debate, and I think he made decisions based on that.”
That fame bought him real power over people who never elected him. The diary shows him leveraging his TV appearances — not his epidemiology — to move mayors and governors. It also shows cozy relationships with sympathetic anchors like CNN’s Jake Tapper, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who helped him advance his narrative and belittle the critics who were right all along. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) captured the hypocrisy at Wednesday’s hearing: “You had time to sit for InStyle magazine… but you can’t answer questions for the American people… now the cat’s got your tongue.”
Even Stephen A. Smith, no ally of the political right, pressed the point after the diary revealed Fauci had recorded a pulmonary infarction five months after his second Moderna shot — never disclosed while he urged Americans to keep boosting: “A grown-ass man in his 80s, keeping a diary? Why did the public learn about it only through his diary, but not himself, while he was telling everybody else to take the vaccine?”
A Tainted Legacy
None of this requires resolving every open scientific question to land. What Fauci’s own words show is a public servant who told Congress one story while his diary told another, a bureaucrat who converted a national tragedy into personal fortune, and a man so intoxicated by fame that he mistook adoration for vindication.
Leave it to Peggy Noonan to see the politics and the damage done: “A lot of professionals were trusted beyond the point they deserved. The medical and scientific establishment didn’t seem to be a part of the public anymore, and by the end, a lot of people thought they couldn’t trust the politicians and couldn’t trust the scientists. My fear is that next time, regular people will think, ‘there’s no one to trust… we’re on our own'” (source: The Wall Street Journal).
That is Anthony Fauci’s real legacy — not the virus he was hired to fight, but the trust he spent five decades building and three years burning down for a magazine profile, a prize check, and a standing ovation from nurses in a hallway.