AP Photo/Allison Robbert Dr. Anthony Fauci appears before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at the Capitol, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Washington. Anthony Fauci is making headlines again. He must be so pleased. The former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director’s diaries have revealed him to be a pathetic, attention-seeking narcissist, as well as a liar.
This week, Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times in order to avoid answering questions before a Senate hearing. But the bureaucrat who once famously told skeptics, “I represent science” is already operating under the protection of a blanket preemptive pardon doled out by Joe Biden’s autopen in 2025. So you have to wonder what he was scared of revealing.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who chaired the committee hearings, has hounded Fauci for years, accusing him of hiding his complicity in the development of the COVID virus. Paul, himself a doctor, has revealed evidence that Fauci’s agency helped finance gain-of-function research, which could have led to the development of the virus that causes COVID-19. Paul insists that some of that money went to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, which the CIA and many others cite as the likely source of the COVID outbreak.
Fauci has long denied that any such funding existed. But documents published in 2021 through a Freedom of Information request show that taxpayer money was indeed given to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that in turn funneled grant funds to the Wuhan lab for bat coronavirus research.
Richard Ebright, a biologist at Rutgers, pointed out when those documents became public that they exposed as “untruthful” claims by Fauci and others “that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present,” Ebright posted online.
The claims and counter-claims are complex. What is not complex is that even as Fauci insisted to the public that the virus came from a wet market in Wuhan, we now know from his newly published diaries that he personally doubted that story. In January 2020, Fauci wrote in his diary, “Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier.” That’s not what he repeatedly told the public — and kept telling us, up to as recently as 2024.
Fauci may have lied about the source of the virus for fear that his involvement in the deaths of millions would become public. But instead of being condemned, he has been celebrated by the gullible media — mainly because he sparred with President Trump.
Fauci’s friends in the press, whom his diaries show he pursued and adored, still defend Fauci’s COVID defense program. Not only did he lie about the source of the virus, but he also was complicit in banning discussion of alternative therapies, shutting down our economy, and hyping a vaccine by exaggerating its benefits and ignoring possibly dangerous side effects. His diary reveals he also lied about his actions.
Fauci told ABC News in 2022 that he had nothing to do with school closures. Meanwhile, in his journal, he had already bragged in 2020 about how he had persuaded leaders in New York City and California (at least) to shut their schools down.
That is the Fauci legacy — both wrong and deceitful at every turn.
Millions of young people who lost vital years of schooling, not to mention their high school proms and college graduations, can thank Fauci. Newlyweds unable to enjoy a honeymoon, those whose parents died alone and the millions whose small businesses failed when everyone was told to stay home can also thank the man who spent his COVID years celebrating his own celebrity.
Fauci made innumerable ecstatic entries in his journals like this one from March 2020: “The public adulation of me has been amazing.” Or this one later that month: “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 person (sic) in the world.”
Even as tens of thousands of Americans were dying each day back in 2020, Fauci’s private reflections show him way more excited about being invited onto “Dancing with the Stars” than his role as a White House adviser. It is like a teenager swooning over a rock idol, except that for Fauci, the rock idol is himself.
Fauci complained more than once that COVID had been politicized, but he was certainly an agent of that politicization. He blasted Trump on numerous occasions and excoriated Republican-led Florida, for instance, because it “does not want to get vaccinated.”
This was not true, of course — the Sunshine State at the time ranked 21st for vaccination rate among the states, with numbers comparable to those of Illinois, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But some public health officials were irrationally incensed that leaders in Florida had also been promoting access to actual treatments for COVID, not solely preaching reliance upon vaccination to the exclusion of all else. After all, the state’s disproportionately elderly population was at high risk. Even in the best case, a vaccine cannot stop you from getting the virus you are already sick with.
Even today, when we know so much about Fauci’s deceptions, the liberal media defends him. The Washington Post published a piece previewing the Senate hearings that spent far more time repeating Democrat praise for the disgraced doctor than delving into ample evidence of his dishonesty. Writing about Fauci’s diaries, the Post focuses on the doctor’s distaste for Trump, not his pathetic groveling for attention.
The reflexive defense of a Trump opponent is to be expected, but it reminds us that the liberal media was also complicit in not challenging the COVID guidance that sent infected seniors to nursing homes; that demanded toddlers wear masks; that dismissed Ivermectin and other remedies as snake oil; that never questioned why the death count actually rose after the vaccine became available, such that former President Joe Biden actually oversaw more COVID deaths during his term than Trump had by January 2021.
The calamity of COVID — both the virus itself and the government’s reaction — must never be repeated. We need to know what happened and why. Fauci, who fancies himself a scientist, should have led that effort instead of heaping disgrace upon himself by working to undermine it.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.
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