Rand Paul released Fauci's pandemic-era 'diary.' Now they'll face off on Capitol Hill

Sen. Rand Paul Releases Fauci Diary Entries Ahead of Senate Hearing on COVID-19 Origins

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questions Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate committee hearing about the federal response to monkeypox in September 2022. Fauci is set to appear before a different Senate committee on Wednesday to answer questions about the origins of COVID-19.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Newly released diary entries that Republican lawmakers attribute to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases until his retirement in December 2022, cover the period from December 2019 through December 2022. The more than 1,100 pages record daily observations during the final years of his tenure at NIAID.

Sen. Rand Paul posted the documents on social media over the weekend, removed them Monday evening, and reposted a redacted version by Tuesday morning. Paul also released a separate 465-page collection of earlier Fauci-related records and emails spanning 2001 to 2015. The releases preceded Fauci’s scheduled testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Paul chairs, on Wednesday.

A spokesperson for Fauci provided a document addressing Paul’s statements and a letter from Fauci’s legal team sent to Paul the previous month. The letter described Paul’s actions as a “years-long public crusade” against Fauci. Paul did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication. The source of the diary documents remains unclear, though a video posted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. referenced material obtained from multiple servers.

The diary entries contain notes on Fauci’s daily activities, including references to added security measures, police presence at his residence, meetings with public figures, and his own increased public profile. One entry from May 21, 2020, states: “Big front page article abut me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering. 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 peson in the world.”

Other entries record reactions to rising case counts and deaths, along with notes on discussions about the virus’s origin. An entry from February 1, 2020, summarizes a conference call with scientists. Fauci recorded that “there was not total agreement” on the virus’s origins. Subsequent entries state that Fauci viewed natural evolution from an animal source as the more probable explanation while keeping an open mind about other possibilities, noting that equal plausibility does not follow from the existence of multiple alternatives.

The February 1 call included discussion of a furin cleavage site in the virus. Participants observed that this feature raised questions about natural origin, and roughly half of those on the call considered the possibility that the site indicated laboratory construction. These details appear in the released notes.

Paul has stated that the entries demonstrate differences between Fauci’s private observations and his public statements. Fauci’s representatives have maintained that the notes reflect an evolving scientific assessment based on available data at each stage.

The hearing centers on the origins of SARS-CoV-2. One line of inquiry concerns whether the virus emerged through natural zoonotic spillover or from research activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The institute conducted studies on bat coronaviruses, including work funded in part through the U.S. nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance. The U.S. government terminated funding for that project in April 2020. In January 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services ended all remaining funding to EcoHealth and its president, Peter Daszak.

In May 2025, President Trump issued an executive order restricting certain categories of gain-of-function research. On Tuesday, HHS issued a policy establishing additional oversight requirements for such work.

In 2025, the White House stated that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Earlier assessments differed. A 2021 joint WHO-China report concluded the virus most likely reached humans through an intermediate animal host. The WHO director-general noted at the time that further work was needed to exclude a laboratory incident. U.S. intelligence agencies in August 2021 did not reach a consensus. The Department of Energy assessed in 2023, with low confidence, that a laboratory origin was more likely. A Republican-led House select subcommittee concluded in December 2024 that a laboratory incident was the most probable explanation and that NIH-funded work had contributed to relevant research at the Wuhan institute.

Virologists contacted by reporters have described early questions about laboratory involvement as part of routine scientific evaluation when data were limited. Others have noted that subsequent analyses found no genetic markers of deliberate engineering and that the virus’s receptor-binding characteristics aligned with patterns seen in natural coronaviruses.

The diary entries and the upcoming hearing occur against ongoing congressional and executive branch reviews of pandemic preparedness, research oversight, and funding decisions. Fauci is expected to address both the released documents and the broader questions about the virus’s emergence.