Paul releases Fauci diary ahead of Senate COVID testimony

Rand Paul released thousands of entries from Anthony Fauci’s personal diary before Fauci’s Senate testimony on the federal COVID-19 response, adding a new document dump to a fight that has already stretched across hearings and subpoenas. The Kentucky Republican’s office says its Reading Room contains records gathered in his investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and risky taxpayer-funded life sciences research.

The diary pages do not settle the larger disputes over the pandemic, but they do show Fauci tracking how closely the country was watching him and, in some passages, appearing to find that attention flattering. That gives Paul and his allies a fresh line of attack, while also showing how much of the current political fight rests on selective records rather than a full record of how the federal response unfolded.

Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, used the release to lower expectations for Fauci’s testimony. Speaking to Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, Johnson said he did not "expect to get much out of" Fauci and described him as "very forgetful, completely unrepentant, arrogant to the extreme." Johnson said he expected little cooperation when Fauci appears before senators.

Paul has spent years pressing Fauci for pandemic-related records, including contacts and emails on COVID and related research, and the diary release fits that broader effort to force more disclosure around the government’s response. Fauci last testified before the Senate on May 11, 2021, when he appeared alongside CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Johnson has also accused officials of a culture of coverups in hearings tied to Fauci and COVID-19, and he has framed his work as an effort to demand transparency and accountability through congressional oversight.

The political backdrop is already charged. In January 2022, Fauci said Paul was driving violent threats against him, while Paul’s website accused Fauci of ignoring good advice and lying about masks and the virus’s contagiousness. The diary entries add one more piece to the paper trail, but the immediate fight in Washington is over how much they actually prove and how lawmakers are using them to shape the story before Fauci takes questions again.