For years, Dr. Anthony Fauci has sworn under oath that he never deleted official records, obstructed FOIA requests, or concealed communications about the Wuhan lab and the origins of COVID-19.
But newly uncovered emails, released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, now suggest otherwise—and Senator Rand Paul is demanding answers.
The documents show a pattern of behavior at odds with Fauci’s public testimony. On February 2, 2020, at the height of the first wave of pandemic panic, Fauci allegedly directed then–NIH Director Francis Collins: “Please delete this e-mail after you read it.”
Months later, on July 20, 2020, he sent another instruction to an NIH employee: “I do not want to engage any more with this nonsense. And so, please delete this e-mail after you read it.” These weren’t stray habits. They were deliberate efforts to make sensitive conversations vanish.
During sworn testimony in June 2024, Fauci flatly denied ever deleting official records or working to obstruct inquiries. That testimony now sits under a cloud of suspicion. As Paul bluntly put it: perjury is a crime.
The senator, now chairing the Homeland Security Committee, has written to Fauci demanding a response within two weeks. He is also pressing for a new public hearing before year’s end—October, November, or December are on the table—and is prepared to issue subpoenas if necessary.
His panel has already issued sweeping subpoenas to 14 federal agencies for records related to COVID-19 origins and gain-of-function research. The goal is not just to determine whether Fauci misled Congress, but to untangle the full story of U.S. funding for risky virus experiments in Wuhan.
This latest clash is just another chapter in a long-running duel. Paul has repeatedly accused Fauci of lying about NIH involvement in controversial research, saying decisions to greenlight such projects had to be signed off by Fauci himself. Paul has even sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department, though Biden’s preemptive pardon of Fauci may complicate accountability.
Fauci has long insisted that he “never lied before Congress.” These emails now appear to say otherwise. And with Rand Paul leading the charge, this battle is headed for a collision course—one that could finally determine whether America’s most celebrated public health official was also its most slippery witness.
