July 29, 2026 09:00 AM PST
(PenniesToSave.com) – For six years, Americans argued about who was responsible for the decisions that shuttered classrooms, churches, and small businesses in the spring of 2020. Much of that argument was conducted without the documents. That changed this week. On July 24, Sen. Rand Paul released more than 1,100 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private diary covering 2019 through 2022 [1a]. On July 27, he released a second tranche covering 2001 through 2015 [1b].
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday night that he located the files on government servers after an eight-month search and turned them over to Paul and Sen. Ron Johnson [6]. Fauci is scheduled to testify Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, under a subpoena Paul issued in June [3][6]. Fauci initially declined to appear voluntarily, and his attorneys cited a sitting senator’s repeated public statements that he should be prosecuted [6].
What follows is drawn from the documents themselves. They are a contemporaneous personal record, not a legal finding. Fauci has not responded to either release, and both Newsweek and CNN reported seeking comment without success [4][6].
Quick Links
- What Did Fauci Write About Closing Schools?
- What Do the Entries Say About the Virus’s Origin?
- How Did Fauci Describe His Dealings With President Trump?
- Why Are Two Senate Chairmen Focused on the Pardon?
- What Do Twenty Years of Entries Reveal About the Man?
What Did Fauci Write About Closing Schools?
The clearest material in the release concerns March 2020. On March 9, Fauci recorded that Gov. Andrew Cuomo called to ask whether to close schools in a section of Westchester County where cases were concentrated. Fauci wrote that he told him yes, and that he advised against closing the subways for the moment [1a].
Six days later, in a March 15 entry he headed as a big day, Fauci recorded speaking with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and “convinced him based on what I was saying publicly” to close the city’s schools, adding that de Blasio had already reached that decision from watching him on television. Fauci then recorded telling the mayor to close bars and restaurants as well. In the same entry, he wrote that Ann O’Leary, chief of staff to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, told him the governor had decided to close California schools, bars, and restaurants based on Fauci’s television appearances over the previous two days [1a]. The federal guidelines issued the following day, which Fauci described as reflecting his own pushing for more aggressive mitigation, included closing schools where there is community spread [1a].
Those entries sit against sworn testimony. Fauci told the House Oversight Committee in January 2024, “I did not close the schools” [5]. Rep. James Comer says the released entries show Fauci taking credit for influencing closure policies [5].
The record also contains the other side, and it is substantial. By May 14, 2020, Fauci recorded that he never said not to open the schools, that he had been misrepresented, and that he printed the transcript of his Senate HELP Committee hearing, tabbed the relevant pages, and had aide Hope Hicks copy them for the President [1a]. By August he wrote that his consistent default position was to attempt to open schools, citing the psychological effects on children, the dependence of many families on school breakfast and lunch, and the downstream burden on working parents, while maintaining that one size does not fit all [1a].
Both things are in the same document. No federal health official holds the authority to close a single school. That power belongs to mayors, governors, and elected school boards. What the March entries document is influence, and by Fauci’s own account it was considerable.
What Do the Entries Say About the Virus’s Origin?
On January 31, 2020, Fauci recorded that Jeremy Farrar, then head of the Wellcome Trust, connected him to a call with virologist Kristian Andersen, with evolutionary biologist Eddie Holmes already involved. According to the entry, the participants were examining the furin cleavage site, a feature of the virus relevant to how it enters human cells, and were weighing the possibility of deliberate insertion followed by accidental or deliberate release [1a][4].
The following day Fauci joined a larger call with Farrar, then National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, Andersen, and others. Participants disagreed among themselves about the likelihood of a laboratory origin and concluded the question warranted further investigation [4].
What that shows is scientists uncertain and referring a question for review. It does not show settled knowledge, and the distinction matters. Sen. Roger Marshall, a physician, told Newsmax this week that Fauci probably knew the virus’s origin in late January 2020 and that he presented a market event near the Wuhan laboratory to the public as the origin [2]. The documents do not establish that, and the geography in that characterization is inaccurate.
The record also cuts the other way on the charge most often leveled at Fauci. In a July 2021 entry, he wrote that analysis of the viruses used at the Wuhan Institute of Virology indicated it was molecularly impossible for anything funded under the relevant NIH grant to have become SARS-CoV-2 [6]. On the gain-of-function question, what he wrote privately matches what he said publicly. CNN characterizes Paul’s allegation that NIAID-funded work caused the pandemic as made without evidence [6].
The origin of COVID-19 remains unknown. U.S. intelligence agencies are divided, with some assessing an accidental laboratory leak as plausible and others supporting natural animal-to-human transmission [3]. Fauci has said he keeps “an open mind as to what the origin is” while considering natural transmission more likely [3]. The entries do not resolve that. What they show is that the possibility Americans were told not to discuss was being discussed at the top of the government in January 2020.
How Did Fauci Describe His Dealings With President Trump?
The diaries record a working relationship that was closer, and more contentious, than either man described publicly. In a January 2020 entry, Fauci wrote that President Trump praised him at a White House meeting, asked whether they were on good terms, and said the administration was counting on him [4]. Entries through that winter show Trump repeatedly seeking his assessments in meetings [4].
The friction is documented in equal measure. On February 27, 2020, Fauci recorded a 10:35 p.m. call at home in which he urged the President not to underplay the seriousness of the outbreak, and noted that Trump did exactly that the following day [6]. In March he wrote that the President was getting crummy with him after a press conference [1a]. Later that month he recorded arguing in a White House discussion that promoting hydroxychloroquine was wrong, and clashing with trade adviser Peter Navarro, who cited studies Fauci considered largely anecdotal [4].
In May 2020 Fauci recorded that Trump was pushing to reopen the country before election day, and characterized the motive as reelection [6]. On July 28, 2020, he wrote that the President treated him cordially in person and to reporters while amplifying attacks on him online [6].
One entry from July 2020 is worth noting for anyone who followed the coverage at the time. Fauci recorded that a Health and Human Services spokesperson told him he was being kept off television over a remark about a false narrative concerning declining deaths [6]. Both Fauci and Trump had publicly denied earlier in the pandemic that his media appearances were being restricted [6]. The private record and the public statements do not line up on that point.
Why Are Two Senate Chairmen Focused on the Pardon?
President Biden issued Fauci a preemptive pardon in the final hours of his administration. It covers offenses from January 1, 2014 forward, and anything related to Fauci’s service as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and as Chief Medical Advisor to the President [5]. Biden cited the threat of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions [3].
Because no charge was ever filed, none of the allegations against Fauci will be tested through indictment, discovery, or cross-examination. That is the practical consequence of a preemptive pardon, and it is why the documents themselves carry so much weight in this dispute.
Two committee chairmen have advanced the same legal theory about the limits of that protection. Paul told Fox Business on July 15 that a false statement made during the hearing would be new conduct the pardon does not reach [6]. Rep. James Comer made a materially identical argument to Fox News Digital on July 28 [5]. Fox’s own reporting notes that because the pardon covers conduct during government service, there will likely be debate over whether it extends to liability arising from testimony [5]. That question is unsettled.
Other members have weighed in. Rep. Greg Murphy, a physician, says Fauci put politics above science during the pandemic [5]. Rep. John Joyce, also a physician, says the entries validate longstanding suspicions about origins [5]. Sen. Marshall told Newsmax that Fauci misled the President, misled the public, and obstructed Congress [2]. These are allegations by sitting legislators, not findings.
Notably, both Paul and Johnson have publicly lowered expectations for Wednesday. Johnson said he does not expect to get much out of Fauci [6]. Fauci has consistently denied wrongdoing and has argued he was made a political target by critics of the pandemic response [5].
What Do Twenty Years of Entries Reveal About the Man?
The second tranche shows the habit of daily record-keeping running back to 2001, long before most Americans knew his name. In October 2001, Fauci recorded that a scientist at the Army’s infectious disease laboratory told him the anthrax mailed to Sen. Tom Daschle was weaponized. When the head of the Office of Homeland Security publicly called the material garden-variety, Fauci wrote that he was floored, and that someone was either withholding the truth from the director or the director was masking it [1b].
His contemporaneous belief about where that anthrax came from was later contradicted. The FBI eventually concluded the material originated domestically. What the entry documents is not a correct guess about the source. It is a senior official’s private conviction that the public was not being leveled with, recorded in real time.
Later entries address research oversight. In January 2012, Fauci recorded telephoning virologist Ron Fouchier at home, pressing a reluctant researcher toward a pause on certain influenza transmissibility studies, and writing that he took the bull by the horns. He and Collins then publicly applauded what was presented as a decision by the scientists [1b]. The following month, on export controls tied to that same research, Fauci wrote that “some subterfuge has gone on” and that he raised his concern before the process proceeded anyway [1b]. In September 2012 he recorded that a National Security Staff official wanted no advisory board pronouncement before the November 6 election, a phrase he rendered in capital letters [1b].
A thread of celebrity runs through both tranches, from Bono and Tony Bennett in the 2000s to a 2015 dinner with Barbra Streisand, then to a Kim Kardashian video call in April 2020 and Streisand phoning about boosters in 2021 [1b][6]. Comer ties that material to pandemic conduct [5]. The record shows a habit two decades older than COVID, and documenting one’s own fame is not the same as deceiving anyone.
The provenance is visible in the file itself. On July 11, 2015, Fauci emailed the document from his NIAID account to his own NIAID account, with the subject line reading simply history [1b]. That is how a private diary came to rest on a government server and, eleven years later, become public.
Final Thoughts
Fauci is 85 and has testified before Congress roughly 250 times across his career [6]. Longtime friend and AIDS activist Peter Staley says “He’s got all the facts on his side” [6]. Whether Wednesday’s hearing produces anything beyond a familiar exchange is uncertain, and the two senators running it have already said they expect little.
The more durable question the release raises is not about one man’s temperament. It is about how much practical authority sits with officials no voter selected. In March 2020, by his own written account, a mayor and a governor’s office closed the schools of the two largest states in the country within hours of watching him on television. He held no power to order any of it. He did not need to.
That is worth understanding clearly, and it is worth understanding fairly. The same documents show him privately pressing a president not to downplay a threat, privately opposing a drug the president promoted, privately arguing that schools should reopen, and privately writing that the lab-origin theory did not fit the grant he funded. Americans are entitled to read all of it and reach their own conclusions. For once, the primary sources are on the table rather than being described to us.
Works Cited
[1a] United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Tony’s Diary. Personal diary of Anthony S. Fauci, entries 2019 through 2022. Released by Chairman Rand Paul, 24 July 2026, static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2026/07/2026.07.24_Tonys-Diary-Package.pdf. Accessed 28 July 2026.
[1b] United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Tony’s Diary: The Prequel. Personal diary of Anthony S. Fauci, entries April 2001 through July 2015. Released by Chairman Rand Paul, 27 July 2026, static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2026/07/2026.07.27_Diary-Prequel-.pdf. Accessed 28 July 2026.
[2] United States, Congress, Senate, Office of Senator Roger Marshall. “Senator Marshall: Dr. Fauci Misled the American People.” Marshall.senate.gov, 28 July 2026, www.marshall.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-marshall-dr-fauci-misled-the-american-people/. Accessed 28 July 2026.
[3] Smith-Schoenwalder, Cecelia. “Senate Showdown: What to Know About Fauci’s COVID-19 Hearing.” U.S. News & World Report, 28 July 2026, www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2026-07-28/senate-showdown-what-to-know-about-faucis-covid-19-hearing. Accessed 28 July 2026.
[4] Gibbs, Alice. “Fauci to Testify About COVID Pandemic: What His Diaries Reveal.” Newsweek, 27 July 2026, www.newsweek.com/fauci-to-testify-about-covid-pandemic-what-his-diaries-reveal-12248239. Accessed 28 July 2026.
[5] Elkind, Elizabeth. “Biden Pardon Won’t Shield Fauci if He Lies to Congress, Comer Says.” Fox News, 28 July 2026, www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-pardon-wont-shield-fauci-he-lies-congress-comer-says. Accessed 28 July 2026.
[6] Owermohle, Sarah, and Adam Cancryn. “Diary Entries, a Subpoena and an Anticipated Clash: Dr. Anthony Fauci and Rand Paul’s Long-Running Battle Returns to the Hill.” CNN, 28 July 2026, www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/politics/anthony-fauci-diary-rand-paul. Accessed 28 July 2026.