(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Ahead of former COVID czar Anthony Fauci’s scheduled appearance Wednesday before the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, committee chair Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., released a tranche of damning records shedding new light on Fauci’s private thoughts and actions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
One email showed Fauci appearing to coerce a Duke University virologist into nominating him for multiple awards in return for more than a billion dollars in grant funding.
The corruption here is off the charts. Rand Paul has just released a trove of emails showing Fauci soliciting various so-called scientists to nominate him for awards, many of which Fauci then went on to win, receiving substantial prize money in the process.
This needs to be… pic.twitter.com/TrOESqAyHs
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) July 25, 2026
In an October 2018 email chain discussing a nomination for the Shaw Prize, Fauci wrote, “There is another one that looks possible to me if you are willing to do it. As usual I will supply all of the material.”
Fauci went on to win the Dan David Prize in 2021, which came with $1 million in prize money.
However, Haynes did not walk away empty-handed either. Between 2006 and 2023 he received an estimated $1.2 billion in funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where Fauci was the director until December 2022. That included two NIAID grants totaling more than $58 million after helping Fauci clinch the Dan David Prize.
Fauci retired when Republicans regained control of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections, all but assuring his actions overseeing the mishandling of the pandemic would come under serious scrutiny.
He received a preemptive pardon on President Joe Biden’s last day in office, the acceptance of which legally serves as an admission of guilt under 1915’s Burdick v. United States.
However, his immunity puts the once highest paid government official in a dilemma, theoretically, as he can no longer plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. Either Fauci will tell the full truth at the hearing Wednesday, with his longtime congressional nemesis holding the gavel, or he will likely face charges including perjury and contempt of Congress.
There is precedent for punishing malicious abuse of the Fifth Amendment during congressional testimony. Former IRS operative Lois Lerner, accused of targeting conservative nonprofits during the Obama administration, was held in contempt for her refusal to testify but was never prosecuted by then-Attorney General Eric Holder.
Ahead of the hearing, where sparks are certain to fly, Paul also released a nine-post thread on X that included purported diary entries from Fauci spanning from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic through his NIAID resignation.
1/9 — My investigation uncovered that Anthony Fauci kept a diary.
What he wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.Today I’m releasing his entries from December 2019 through December 2022. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/58LvmeYkCN
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) July 25, 2026
Among the takeaways was that Fauci and his colleagues openly doubted Chinese claims that the virus had come from a wet market rather than the Wuhan Institute for Virology, which Fauci was secretly collaborating with to conduct gain-of-function research. Nonetheless, they agressively pushed the wet-market theory in public.
Previously released emails from Fauci have exposed the callous and opportunistic mindset he exhibited during the pandemic’s early stages.
In March 2020, on the same day that the U.S. declared a national pandemic emergency, Fauci was more preoccupied with an invitation to attend a meeting of the shadowy, globalist Trilateral Commission.
Emails also showed him turning down meetings with pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson, while dwelling obsessively on his media coverage and the deli order he planned to put in for lunch.
“How about a pastrami sandwich on rye and a potato knish?” Fauci wrote.
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
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