Dr. Anthony Fauci doubted masks worked long before he let Americans know it, his own diary shows.
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, released the 1,141-page document days before Dr. Fauci is slated to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in a final showdown. Mr. Paul, the panel’s chairman, said in a fundraising email Monday that he had to subpoena Dr. Fauci to force him to testify.
The diary, which spans Dr. Fauci’s private thinking from early 2020 through the Biden administration, includes a March 31 entry acknowledging, “We probably were too strong in saying masks do not work.” He wrote that just before the government officially came out in favor of masking — after Dr. Fauci himself had told the public in early March 2020 that “people should not be walking around with masks.”
Mr. Paul’s office said the diary’s near-daily writings “completely undermine” what Dr. Fauci said publicly at the time.
The senator said he plans to ask Dr. Fauci about NIH funding for gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China; his role in what Mr. Paul calls a cover-up of COVID-19’s origins; and why he sought a preemptive pardon from Mr. Biden if he “did nothing wrong.”
The diary also reveals Dr. Fauci’s private insults toward Mr. Paul, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others, along with his fixation on favorable media coverage during the pandemic’s peak.
Read more:
• Fauci fixated on fame as COVID deaths mounted, diary reveals
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