OPINION:
If Dr. Anthony Fauci didn’t exist, a satirist would have had to invent him.
A government bureaucrat so drunk on his own celebrity that he tracked press coverage of himself alongside a rising COVID-19 death toll. A public health official who privately nudged mayors and governors into shutting down cities, then spent the next two years insisting that he had absolutely nothing to do with it.
A scientist who privately entertained serious doubts about the origins of COVID-19, then publicly dismissed as fringe conspiracy theories doubts that it came from a lab in Wuhan, China.
Thanks to Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, who released over 1,100 pages of Dr. Fauci’s private diary on Saturday, we no longer need the skilled satirist. The man wrote it all down himself.
How narcissistic was Dr. Fauci? He endlessly tracked fawning media coverage in a schoolgirl-like diary, noting that Brad Pitt played him in a skit on “Saturday Night Live” and that he got an email from Barbra Streisand.
“Truly unbelievable,” he wrote in May of 2020. “People naming their dogs after me. Sally Quinn saying that I was the erotic lead male in a book she wrote in 1994.”
But the diary gave new insight into the most powerful man during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, some facts: In an October 2022 interview with ABC News, Dr. Fauci said: “I did not close the schools. They always come back and say, ’Fauci was responsible for shutting schools down.’ I had nothing to do with it!”
In 2022, he told The Hill: “I didn’t recommend locking anything down.” In January 2024, he testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and said it again for good measure: “I did not close the schools.”
Yet his own diary tells a completely different story.
On March 15, 2020 — a date Dr. Fauci marked in his diary with “BIG DAY!” written in red letters — he recorded the following: “I spoke with Bill de Blasio (Mayor – NYC) and convinced him based on what I was saying publicly and my conversation tonight to close the NYC schools.”
The same entry notes a call with Ann O’Leary, chief of staff to California Gov. Gavin Newsom: “Ann said that based on my TV appearances today and yesterday, the Governor has decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants.”
But the lockdown contradictions are almost quaint compared with what the diary reveals about Dr. Fauci’s view of himself. While Americans were losing jobs, burying family members and watching their children fall behind in school, the good doctor was busy cataloging his own rise to superstardom.
On March 21, 2020, while the U.S. death toll climbed: “Big front page article about me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering.”
The very next day, March 22, as cases surged past 30,000: “Press is going wild with me.”
And then, the entry that would make even the most shameless reality TV star blush: “The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. 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.”
The doctor also made bank. He personally solicited nominations — from scientists whose research was funded by his agency — for a $1 million Israeli prize. He pocketed $890,000 into his personal account. At his retirement, Dr. Fauci was worth some $12 million (in his last year at NIH, he made $480,654 — more than the president and Supreme Court justices).
In one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden granted Dr. Fauci a sweeping preemptive pardon covering any offenses between Jan. 1, 2014, and the pardon’s issue date. The pardon encompasses Dr. Fauci’s tenure as National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, his service on the White House Coronavirus Task Force and his role as chief medical adviser.
But a day before his mandated testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer warned the doctor that his presidential pardon has limits and that further dishonesty will have consequences.
“Biden’s pardon doesn’t cover Dr. Fauci’s testimony this week, and if he continues to lie, he must be held accountable,” the Kentucky Republican said. “While obsessing about his own fame, Dr. Fauci wasn’t truthful with the American people about the origins of COVID and advised schools to be closed. Americans are still reaping the consequences of Dr. Fauci’s actions.”
That warning was front of mind when Dr. Fauci appeared to testify. To each and every question from both sides, he robotically repeated, “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.”
In total, he pleaded the Fifth more than 100 times. On Wednesday, Mr. Paul ordered the committee to hold a contempt-of-Congress vote next week on Dr. Fauci’s invocation of the amendment at the hearing.
At one point, he refused to say what day it was or the color of his tie.
Mr. Paul let him have it. “The chairman has denied your assertion of privilege and directed you to answer him, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege, despite the existence of the pardon. The committee will have to consider after this hearing what appropriate action should be taken against you for the failure to testify after being directed to do so. It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”
“This is the way Dr. Fauci wants to be remembered,” Mr. Paul said.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com.
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