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Rand Paul releases Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diaries ahead of hearing showdown - CNN
By Sarah Owermohle, Adam Cancryn7/28/20261 min read
Even before the US enacted a national shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci pondered whether he might have testified before Congress more than any other official.
✨ Key Highlights
- Former NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci, 85, is set to testify Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, in what is expected to be a contentious hearing.
- The committee's chairman, Sen. Rand Paul, has long sought to attribute the Covid-19 pandemic and failures in the US response to Fauci, and subpoenaed him in June after Fauci initially declined to appear voluntarily.
- Fauci's lawyers cited Paul's repeated public statements that the scientist should be prosecuted and jailed, calling those pronouncements "absolutely baseless" and part of a context that could not be ignored.
- Ahead of the hearing, the committee released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci's personal diary spanning 2019 to 2022, which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he located on government servers after an eight-month search and handed to Paul and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson.
- Neither HHS nor Paul's committee notified Fauci in advance that they had obtained his diary or intended to publish it in full, according to a person familiar with the matter.
- The entries chronicle Fauci's frequent media appearances, rising public profile and interactions with celebrities and journalists, alongside his mounting concerns about Covid-19 and his sometimes conflicting relationships with officials in both the Trump and Biden administrations.
Even before the US enacted a national shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci pondered whether he might have testified before Congress more than any other official.
As the longtime