The confidential records of the man who led the U.S. response to Covid-19 contain far more than scientific notes or public health updates. They offer a raw portrait of a system of power under extreme strain.


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The confidential records of the man who led the U.S. response to Covid-19 contain far more than scientific notes or public health updates. They offer a raw portrait of a system of power under extreme strain.

Republican Senator Rand Paul released Anthony Fauci's personal diaries just hours before the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was compelled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. The archive, filled with phone calls, behind-the-scenes accounts, and unfiltered personal reflections, lifts the curtain on how America's institutions managed the public health crisis.

*From Trump's Honeymoon Praise to Threats of Being Silenced*

Entries from early 2020 reveal an unexpected initial alliance. During the first emergency briefings, Donald Trump described Fauci as "the smartest person in the world," repeatedly seeking his approval in front of television cameras and appearing fascinated by the scientist's overwhelming media popularity.

That early harmony quickly collapsed amid growing tensions within the White House staff.

The diary documents the sharp deterioration of Fauci's relationship with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, whom the scientist accused of launching direct verbal attacks and threatening to limit his television appearances in an effort to soften public messaging about the seriousness of the outbreak.

Fauci also directed harsh criticism at administration figures responsible for official communications, describing then-Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Michael Caputo as an impostor who privately attempted to block interviews that he publicly claimed to support.

*Three Decades at the Intersection of Politics and Pop Culture*

Appointed in 1984 as a leading national figure in the fight against HIV and retained by seven different presidential administrations, Fauci's role was transformed during the 2020 crisis into an unprecedented mass-media phenomenon.

The political divide surrounding the pandemic pushed the virologist into an extraordinary media and institutional storm unlike anything previously seen in U.S. public health, where infection numbers were increasingly intertwined with the nightly ratings of prime-time television programs.

The pages reveal private exchanges with prominent television journalists, Washington dinners, and correspondence with figures from the international entertainment world.

From Julia Roberts to Steph Curry, as well as contacts with Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, described in the notes as a potential wild card in government technology projects, Fauci's daily life became caught between a national emergency and the world of celebrity culture.

*The Human Side Beyond Bureaucracy*

The final entry dates back to December 2022, during the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony. The diary closes with a scene in which Fauci embraces Hunter Biden, accompanied by a joke about the online backlash a photo of the two together would likely trigger.

Beyond statistics and political battles, the release of these private writings offers a portrait of a man standing alone at the center of a relentless machine.

A public servant who, after removing his white coat and stepping away from television cameras, turned to his nightly notes to record frustration, exhaustion, and the simple need to defend himself against a world determined to break him.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci ruled out Wuhan market origin for COVID-19 in private diary entries


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Dr. Anthony Fauci ruled out Wuhan market origin for COVID-19 in private diary entries

By Josh Christenson Published July 27, 2026 Updated July 27, 2026, 12:56 p.m. PDT

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WASHINGTON - Former White House COVID czar Dr. Anthony Fauci privately ruled out a wet market in Wuhan, China, as the source of the pandemic as early as January 2020 despite years of subsequent statements to the contrary, according to explosive diary entries released by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) .

The then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) wrote to himself on Jan. 26, 2020: "It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market."

"The infections spread among people weeks before the Chinese reported that they were dealing with a new infection and that gave the virus time to establish itself in multigenerational (sustained) spread," he noted. "Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market."

Dr. Anthony Fauci smiling at a podium during a COVID-19 briefing. Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks to reporters duringa press briefing at the White House on Nov. 22, 2022. Getty Images

People in face masks purchasing seafood at a market in Macau, China. Residents wear face. masks as they purchase seafood at a wet market in Macau, China on Jan. 28, 2020. Getty Images

"Now we know the market was not the source , it was the amplifier," he underscored, adding that he was still convinced "somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans."

But in interviews throughout 2020 and 2021, Fauci maintained that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, did, in fact, originate in the Wuhan wet market.

A now-infamous Feb. 1, 2020, phone call that included at least 11 other scientists also debated the origins of COVID, with all but two participants leaning toward a natural spillover from animals to humans.

"[T]he rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible and given the fact that Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at the University of Wuhan has been working for years in GOF [gain of function] in coronaviruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human ACE2 receptor, we could not let this go," Fauci wrote.

Shi, sometimes referred to as the "bat lady " in previously disclosed government emails, was a longtime researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The excerpts from more than 1,000 pages of diary entries , which Paul published on Saturday, stunned some former Trump administration officials who worked directly with the NIAID chief on the White House COVID Task Force during the first year of the pandemic.

"I was one of the seven original members of the Coronavirus task force --- stood up in January 2020 --- and he never said this to us, even as the source was a subject of intense interest," Ken Cuccinelli, then the acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on X in response to Fauci's unearthed remarks.

Asked during a "Fox & Friends" interview on April 3, 2020, whether wet markets should be closed to prevent viruses like COVID from emerging, Fauci responded , "What we're going through right now is a direct result of that."

A document page titled "Released by Chairman Rand Paul," detailing diary entries from Anthony Fauci from January 25-26, 2020, discussing the initial COVID-19 outbreak, China's response, the virus's origin, and US policy considerations.

CBS News' "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan pressed the NIAID head nearly 20 months later about whether "the place of origin was not within the market itself."

"I don't think you could say that," Fauci said on Nov. 28, 2021. "I think you could say we don't know how and where it originated. There were wet markets in Wuhan that are ample opportunity for a virus to jump from an animal that gets brought in from all parts of China that are very closely related physically to bat enclaves in caves and come to the market."

As late as June 2024, Fauci tripled down in congressional testimony and in his memoir that one of the Wuhan wet markets was the most likely origin of the coronavirus.

Ken Cuccinelli speaking at a press conference with other task force members. "I was one of the seven original members of the Coronavirus task force --- stood up in January 2020 --- and he never said this to us, even as the source was a subject of intense interest," wrote Ken Cuccinelli on X. AFP via Getty Images

He wrote in "On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service" that "experienced evolutionary virologists" who "published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature" determined "the virus emerged as a natural spillover from infected animals brought illegally into the market."

The ex-NIAID director remained one of the foremost opponents of the so-called "lab leak theory," along with former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, with Fauci going so far as to prompt a scientific paper attempting to debunk the hypothesis while serving on the White House COVID Task Force.

That paper, "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2," was authored by scientists whose internal debates over their natural origin hypothesis were revealed in Slack messages published by Paul's committee .

"Our paper was pretty strong in saying 'there's no way', but I have less confidence in that statement at this stage," wrote co-author Kristian Andersen in a June 11, 2020, message.

Fauci had initiated and helped edit the study, which was published on Feb. 17, 2020, but claimed at a White House press conference two months later: "I don't have the authors right now, but we can make it available to you."

The Nature Medicine publication would show SARS-CoV-2 had "mutations" that were "totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human."

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield, the Energy Department , FBI, CIA and other scientists have all since determined that an accidental lab leak is the most likely explanation for the pandemic's emergence in late 2019.

Workers unloading fish from a truck into a tank at a wet market. Workers wear face masks as they unload fish at Wuhan Baishazhou Market in Wuhan, China on April 15, 2020. AFP via Getty Images

Elsewhere in Fauci's diary, the doctor fretted about asymptomatic transmission of the virus as early as Jan. 26, 2020, though publicly he downplayed the risks.

"GAME ON!!! Things are changing rapidly," he wrote. "Dr. Ma Xiaowei, the Chinese Minister of Health gave a press statement saying that the incubation period of nCoV is 1 to 14 days and that the virus is being transmitted when people are asymptomatic!"

"This has enormous implications for how we handle people from Wuhan (like our diplomats who are now on the way back from WUHAN, having been ordered to evaculate [sic]). Should we quarantine them. I am very skeptical about the Chinese interprepation [sic] of their data," Fauci added.

Members of the WHO team wearing face masks arrive by car at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Federal officials and scientists have pointed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the likely originating point of COVID-19. AFP via Getty Images

In public remarks two days later, Fauci told reporters: "The driver of respiratory outbreaks is symptomatic people, not asymptomatic carriers."

On Wednesday, Fauci will testify before Paul's Senate Homeland Committee about his tenure at NIAID and handling of the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fauci's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.