Senator Rand Paul has released more than 1,100 pages of diary entries written by Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic, a disclosure spanning December 2019 to December 2022 that lands one day before Fauci is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday.
The journals reveal Fauci's private assessments of then-President Donald Trump, describing him as "rambling," "crazy," and "a true embarrassment". Fauci recorded that Trump once told him he was "losing me trillions of f***ing dollars" and complained about the former president's fixation on publicity and twice-daily press conferences. Fauci also admitted to being a source for Bob Woodward's book on the early pandemic response.
On origins, Fauci wrote in January 2020 that the Wuhan market was an amplifier, not the source, and noted that only two of twelve researchers on an early conference call favoured a natural origin. The disclosures follow a late-2024 Republican subcommittee conclusion that a lab leak was the most likely origin of SARS-CoV-2. Fauci also privately accused Paul of spreading conspiracy theories linking him to the virus.