Cornered in Lies by His Own Emails, Tony Fauci Called to Testify Again Before the Senate

“Please delete this email after you read it” Fauci emailed his chief of staff, later testifying under oath he never deleted emails.

5 minute read

If you have the patience and masochistic energy to follow a DC government scandal, you’ll notice that officials duck, dodge and lie to avoid reckoning with their misdeeds. Fibs and obfuscation make it hard for the average people to track federal corruption, causing most sane people to eventually tune out the drama as just more DC nonsense.

But sometimes a miscreant gets caught.

Senator Rand Paul released documents last week proving beyond all reasonable doubt that Anthony Fauci lied under oath when he testified that he had never destroyed public records. The beloved liberal icon’s disregard for telling the truth has been a news item since I reported in August 2021 that he lied under oath while testifying in Congress about his role in funding dangerous gain-of-function virus research in Wuhan, China. Months after my report, The Intercept released documents proving that, despite his congressional testimony to the contrary, Fauci’s institute had funded dangerous virus research at a lab in Wuhan (NIH Documents Provide New Evidence U.S. Funded Gain-of-Function Research in Wuhan). Vanity Fair jumped on the “Fauci fibbed” dogpile sometime after (In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan).

Sources have told me Senator Paul is sitting on a mountain of millions of emails the White House sent him some weeks back, and his committee staff have uploaded them into a computer system with sophisticated software to scan for keywords. Senator Paul’s staff lack the background and rigorous training required to run investigations, but they did dig up a few nuggets proving beyond all doubt that Fauci is a pathological liar who lies like all liars lie.

“Please delete this email after you read it,” Fauci wrote to then NIH-Director Francis Collins in a February 2021 email discussing how the pandemic started. Fauci, Collins and other NIH officials were chewing over an email from Jeremy Farrar who was suggesting how to address the pandemic’s origin and plotting to “get ahead of the science” to knock down narratives and reports that could be “damaging.”

Along with the NIH, Wellcome Trust’s Jeremey Farrar was one of the major funders of virus research. Previous reports examining emails have found that Farrar and Fauci engaged in a cover-up as they were frightened the public might learn the pandemic could have started in a Wuhan lab—a lab they funded. House Democrats charged in a 2023 staff report that Farrar helped ghostwrite a study that denied the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident.

Despite telling NIH officials in 2020 to “delete this email” Fauci denied on three separate occasions while testifying under oath last year that he had ever sought to destroy government records or evade freedom of information laws. Falsifying or concealing information from Congress is illegal—called a 1001 violation—and can result in up to five years imprisonment.

Fauci’s deceptive remarks came during a congressional hearing in June 2024. Here’s a link to the hearing transcript which you can search—however, I’ll post clips from the hearing, below.

Congressman James Comer asked, “Dr. Fauci, did you ever delete an official record?”

Fauci responded, “No.”

Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis asked, “Did you delete any emails or records related to the Wuhan lab or the origins of the virus?”

Fauci responded, “No, I did not.”

Congresswoman Debbie Lesko asked, “Were you engaged in attempts to obstruct the Freedom of Information Act and the release of public documents?”

Fauci replied, “No.”

Senator Paul released a second email driving home the point that Fauci regularly asked his NIH colleagues to delete government records. Fauci’s chief of staff, Greg Folkers, forwarded Fauci a July 2020 tweet by Senator Paul complaining at the time that Fauci was misleading the country about the numbers of deaths caused by COVID.

“As usual he is full of sh..t,” Fauci emailed back to Folkers. Fauci then detailed how he had explained the rate of COVID deaths to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff.

“Please delete this email after you read it,” Fauci told Folkers.

When congressional investigators deposed Folkers in December 2023, he stated that he had access to Fauci’s email account, but alleged this was so he and others could delete “hate mail.”

After President Trump won election, Elon Musk’s DOGE fired hundreds of NIH employees including communications and HR staff, as well as employees who handle freedom of information act (FOIA) requests.

Posting a story about these firings, Folkers who admitted to deleting Fauci’s emails while he was his chief-of-staff, complained that letting go FOIA staff “will leave Americans in the dark about urgent health matters.”

Fauci’s Future

Senator Paul sent Fauci a letter demanding more of his emails and requesting that he pick a date to appear before the Committee he chairs, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC). Paul has promised to get to the bottom of how the pandemic started, but this will require a bit more work than just catching Fauci in a 1001 violation for lying about congressional testimony.

Senator Paul also asked Fauci to schedule a meeting before the Committee, which might turn into an interesting spectacle.

As I reported back in January after President Biden granted Fauci a pardon for all his actions stretching back to 2014, Fauci can no longer hide behind Fifth Amendment protections when testifying before Congress. If interested in understanding this legal nuance, see this Washington Post essay from 2020 (“If you’re pardoned, you can’t take the Fifth when Congress asks you to talk”).

Unable to dodge questions by invoking the Fifth, Fauci now risks contempt procedures or being charged with a 1001 violation if he lies to Senator Paul about any of his prior lies. Stay tuned.