They Show Why the Public Lost Faith in Experts
Anthony Fauci is back in the news. Senator Rand Paul and his staff obtained a treasure trove of private diary entries before the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases “testified” at a committee hearing on Wednesday. And what they show is why, by huge margins, Americans distrust public institutions and the people who lead them.
Likely notes for a future memoir that will thankfully never see the light of day, Fauci’s diary entries show many things—and none good.
Like the yawning chasm between Hillary Clinton’s public and private comments during the 2016 election, Fauci’s diary reveals a striking contrast between his private and public messaging. In an entry from early February 2020, he notes that he called COVID “bad influenza” during a conversation with then-CDC Director Tom Frieden. But in congressional testimony only a month later, on March 11, he said COVID was “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.”
Perhaps new data caused him to change his mind in the interim, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In an editorial for the New England Journal of Medicine published in late February, Fauci and his co-authors wrote that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%).”
Discrepancies also emerge on the question of COVID’s origin. As early as January 2020, Fauci understood, according to the diary, that the Chinese wet market was “not the source” but the “amplifier” of the virus. During a February 2020 call, just two of the 12 scientists present thought the virus had a natural origin; he noted that a clear majority “felt that deliberate insertion was possible.” But Fauci then waged a public campaign to boost the minority view while seeking to destroy the reputations of those in his profession who believed a lab leak was the most likely explanation.
Fauci carried out a months-long effort to tar those who broke with the elite consensus on lockdowns, masking, and virus transmission. He went so far as to label the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration—the well-respected epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff—“the 3 stooges.” It mattered not at all that tens of thousands of scientists and medical practitioners signed the document. Were we really supposed to believe, per Fauci, that all of these people were simply the equivalent of modern-day Neanderthals?
Reflecting on Fauci’s malfeasance, it was fitting that Jay Bhattacharya was confirmed by the Senate as director of the National Institutes of Health early in the second Trump administration. The man Fauci mocked ultimately was confirmed to head the institution that oversees the one Fauci used to lead.
This is arguably the ugliest part of the diary: Fauci’s relentless campaign against anyone who came to different conclusions based on an honest assessment of the data, rendering them persona non grata within the science and public health communities. In a cultural environment where people’s livelihoods were being destroyed through rumors, innuendo, kangaroo courts, and uncorroborated statements, Fauci rode the same cultural wave, working to cancel those who had crossed him.
Fauci wasn’t “following the science”—as if he himself were the embodiment of a master science that could give settled answers for all time. He was engaging in a concerted effort to intimidate and shut down those who disagreed with the institutional consensus by destroying reputations and careers.
Then there’s the vanity that the writer of Ecclesiastes so poignantly warns us about.
The diary entries detail Fauci’s monomaniacal efforts to cultivate his celebrity status, which belies the image of Fauci as the serious public servant that was projected through the media’s many megaphones. “Press still hot and heavy about me. Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me,” he wrote on April 7, 2020. This kind of teen-tinged tone is how Fauci describes his love affair with the media and obsession with fame throughout the more than 1,000 pages of entries released.
Fauci clearly reveled in media hits, lengthy write-ups in legacy media outlets, photo sessions, and appearances on Sunday-morning political shows. He uses the term “Fauci 5” when he hit the jackpot and appeared on all five shows on the same Sunday. He also worked to build friendships with prominent members of Congress and with the media, including a dinner with CNN’s Jake Tapper—the same media personages who were supposed to be holding him accountable.
In a typical diary entry, this one from March 21, 2020, right after a single line noting the death toll for that day—9,800 in this case—Fauci spent the rest of the entry delighting in the media’s coverage of him. “Big front page article about me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering.” He continues: “The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable.” And finally: “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 persons in the world.”
So what can be done about Fauci now? Though he deserves far more than merely being asked stern questions and facing the circus that modern congressional hearings have become, unfortunately, not much. President Biden gave him a broad preemptive pardon as he was leaving the White House in January 2025, though it would not cover any perjury or contempt charges arising from Wednesday’s committee hearing. And though he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination over 100 times to avoid answering the committee’s questions, Fauci could still be charged with contempt.
This should also prompt Republicans—especially younger officeholders—to be ready to stop abuses when they first appear, not years later. Acting after the fact, including undertaking the very difficult act of overturning a presidential pardon, is far too late, as the statute of limitations has already expired on many of the charges that could be filed.
This doesn’t mean that there’s no work left to do. Republicans should continue to look into Fauci’s subordinates who are not covered by pardons, such as David Morens, a former senior NIAID official and close Fauci associate. The Department of Justice indicted Morens in April on charges including conspiracy and concealing or destroying records related to FOIA evasion and COVID-origin discussions.
Congressional Republicans can also put forward legislation that would tie bureaucrats’ pay and advancement to job performance, streamline and shorten the process for removing bad employees, increase disclosure of laboratories where gain-of-function research is occurring, and strengthen conflict-of-interest rules, which is especially needed for those who regulate the pharmaceutical industry. Republicans can also look into changing the statute of limitations for federal crimes.
The GOP needs to reassert its control over the funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, as it must do with the other departments, agencies, and commissions that make up the modern administrative state.
State attorneys general also have a role, as they are free to file both criminal and civil charges against Fauci. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a state investigation into Fauci on Wednesday, saying that “It’s past time we get the truth of what happened during COVID.” This may include, in addition to perjury, investigating charges of “fraud, violations of public trust, [and] specific duties of care that medical officers may have,” according to the Manhattan Institute’s Ilya Shapiro.
When you get past the “In FAUCI WE TRUST” rhetoric and the bobbleheads, action figures, and t-shirts emblazoned with Fauci’s face, you see a man who has consistently put protecting and burnishing his own reputation with the elite class above average Americans who were hit hard during the lockdowns. Businesses were destroyed, livelihoods were upended, and family members died alone. But Fauci got his applause, awards, and recognition.
The diary entries show a man of almost unfathomable arrogance who cared far more about the plaudits he received on an episode of Morning Joe than the aftermath of the havoc he wreaked on the country. Taken together, the diary shows a man so consumed by vanity, pride, and ego that he essentially became the figurehead of a new American religion, a Joseph Smith for the age of the wonky bureaucrat.
As Fauci said on MSNBC in an infamous 2021 statement, “A lot of what you’re seeing as attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” Fauci, the high priest of COVIDism, presided over a dark time in American history, a cautionary tale that our country should never want to repeat.
Government by so-called enlightened experts is a clear rejection of our patrimony. In order to return to republican government, reining in the bureaucrats who think they have a divine right to dictate to the rest of us is essential.
