Anthony Fauci’s carefully polished image as America’s favorite nonpartisan scientist just took another hit. Diary entries released Wednesday by Sen. Rand Paul show Fauci privately wanted President Trump impeached and publicly praised an Ebola vaccine he privately called “terribly flawed.”
Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, released documents containing Fauci’s personal diary entries from 2015 to 2019. You know, the years before Fauci became a liberal folk hero with his face on coffee mugs and prayer candles. Turns out the whole “apolitical public servant” thing was more of a costume than a character trait.
In January 2019, Fauci wrote about Trump pushing for $5 billion for border wall funding: “He is acting more and more bizarre. Should be impeached, but Dems are rightfully concerned that this will galvanize his base.” So while he was playing neutral scientist on TV, he was writing political commentary in his diary like a very credentialed teenage girl.
The Ebola vaccine story is where things get genuinely troubling. The World Health Organization announced in July 2015 that its Ebola vaccine showed “up to 100% efficacy in individuals.” Fauci was out there on CNN, BBC, PBS, and in the New York Times, singing its praises. Behind closed doors, he was writing that the study had “multiple flaws in the design and the analysis of the data” and called it a “terribly flawed study design.” He even admitted, “The data, strictly speaking, are not statistically significant.”
He didn’t stop there. Fauci explained exactly why he kept quiet about the problems: “We cannot criticize the study since that is exactly what the press is looking for and that will create tension between HHS and WHO. HHS is too stupid to realize that.” Public health hero, ladies and gentlemen. Kept his mouth shut to manage press optics, then insulted the colleagues trying to hold him accountable.
According to the Fauci diary entry release, FDA vaccine official Phil Krause had already raised concerns about the study design directly to Fauci. Krause would later resign from the FDA under pressure from the Biden administration to approve COVID-19 boosters for young, healthy Americans, a push Fauci also supported. Funny how that works.
When HHS communications staff tried to slow Fauci down, he went around them. He appealed to Leslie Dach, a former Clinton administration official serving as a senior HHS counselor, to get the green light anyway. “HHS COMMs is getting all bent out of shape trying to micromanage what I say on TV and even tried to shut me down on TV but I appealed to Leslie Dach who gave me the go-ahead,” Fauci wrote. Dach now chairs Protect Our Care, a Democrat dark money group currently involved in organizing Medicaid protests.
Paul’s committee previously released documents in September showing that in 2016, the U.S. military found vaccinated primates exposed to aerosolized Ebola developed lung injuries that unvaccinated primates did not, a finding that rattled African embassies and, according to the documents, flustered Fauci. The committee’s investigation into pandemic origins and Fauci’s role in suppressing lab leak discussions is ongoing.
So the next time someone tells you to “trust the experts,” remember that America’s most famous expert was writing impeachment fan fiction in his diary while going on CNN to praise science he privately called garbage. Let us know what you think in the comments or on social media, because apparently some things are too important to leave to the experts.
