Summary:

Anthony Fauci is due to appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on 29 July 2026 under subpoena from Chairman Rand Paul. In the days before the hearing the committee released Fauci's personal diary from the early months of the pandemic. The entries record private assessments that in several instances diverge from his contemporaneous public statements — on the virus's case fatality rate, on the role of the Huanan market, and on the plausibility of a laboratory origin. They also document his awareness of his rising public profile and the friction between the health team and the White House. The diary forms part of a broader set of committee records touching on federal awards sought for Fauci, the handling of Peter Daszak on his return from China, and the internal deliberations of the Proximal Origin authors. The material is expected to frame the committee's questioning on COVID-19 origins, gain-of-function research, and related matters.

  

Detailed Report

 

1. Fauci Faces Senate Scrutiny

Anthony Fauci is scheduled to testify on 29 July 2026 before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The appearance follows a subpoena issued by Chairman Rand Paul after Fauci declined a voluntary invitation. Paul’s office has presented the newly released diary as relevant background for the session, which is expected to examine the origins of COVID-19, gain-of-function research, and related questions.

 

2. Private Notes, Public Statements

The diary, released on 24–25 July 2026, begins in late December 2019 and covers the critical early period of the outbreak. Several entries record private assessments that stand in clear contrast to statements Fauci made publicly in the weeks and months that followed.

 

2A. Case Fatality Rate

On 8 February 2020, after speaking with Tom Frieden, Fauci wrote that both men believed the outbreak was “acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility” and that the true case fatality rate was “more like 0.2–0.3 % rather than 2.0 %.” In public appearances over the following weeks the figures he used were substantially higher. On 10 March he told Sean Hannity the mortality was about 2–2.5%, “closer to 1%,” and “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.” The next day, under oath before Congress, he stated the overall fatality rate was about 3%, or roughly 1% when asymptomatic cases were included — again “10 times more deadly than the seasonal flu.” On 27 March he repeated on television that the mortality was “about 10 times the flu” and “at least 1%.”

2B. Origins and the Huanan Market 

On 26 January 2020 Fauci recorded that epidemiological and genomic data showed the first infections had occurred in early December and were not connected to the Huanan market. “Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” he wrote. At that stage, public messaging from U.S. health officials, including Fauci, still largely tracked the initial Chinese reporting that linked the outbreak to the market. In the months that followed he continued to describe a natural spillover as the most likely origin. In a May 2020 National Geographic interview he stated that the scientific evidence was “very, very strongly leaning toward” the conclusion that the virus “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” and dismissed laboratory-related suggestions as a “circular argument.”

 

2C. The 1 February Conference Call

A conference call on 1 February 2020 is described in detail. Participants included Francis Collins, Jeremy Farrar, Kristian Andersen, Christian Drosten, Edward Holmes, Ron Fouchier and others. Fauci’s note states that only two of those present concluded the virus had arisen naturally. “The rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible,” given the years of gain-of-function research on coronavirus spike proteins conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 

2D. Proximal Origin and the Intelligence Assessments 

In May 2021, while publicly citing the Proximal Origin paper as independent scientific support for a natural origin, Fauci called its lead author, Kristian Andersen. The diary records that Andersen reassured him the research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology under an NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance was not gain-of-function work and that the viruses studied were not closely related to SARS-CoV-2. Fauci wrote: “I feel much better now that he is in total support of what I have been saying.” In July 2021 he described a CIA briefing on laboratory-origin intelligence as “very strange,” called the briefer “pathetic in her naivety,” and wrote that the FBI “has no idea what they’re talking about” in concluding a lab leak.

 

3. Fame, Friction, and the White House

Many diary pages place daily case and death figures alongside detailed records of press coverage. In March 2020 Fauci noted a “very flattering” front-page Washington Post profile and wrote that his “national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable.” Another entry states it was “not hyperbole” to say he had become “the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable persons in the world.”

The diary also records sharp internal conflict. On 23 April 2020, Deborah Birx told Fauci that President Trump had called her into the Oval Office after a press conference and yelled that “You and Fauci have destroyed the country and the economy.” An August 2020 meeting produced further strong language from Trump directed at the health team. In July 2020 Fauci noted White House efforts to circulate lists of his “mistakes and errors.” He then recorded what he described as a major show of public support and wrote that the attempt to discredit him was an attack on “the most credible scientist in the world.”

 

4. The Wider Paper Trail

The diary forms part of a larger set of records released by the committee. Internal correspondence shows sustained efforts inside NIH and HHS to secure multiple paid awards and cash prizes for Fauci. Separate files document that Customs and Border Protection had designated Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance a high person of interest, only for the FBI to intervene and request that he not be stopped for questioning on his return from China. A lengthy transcribed interview with Ralph Baric, one of the world’s leading coronavirologists and a collaborator on research linked to Wuhan, records his account of the science and his involvement in early discussions of the virus’s features. Private Slack messages among the authors of the Proximal Origin paper show them assigning real probabilities to a laboratory origin while discussing how to manage their communications under Freedom of Information Act scrutiny.

 

Conclusion

Fauci is due to testify under subpoena on 29 July. The preceding days saw the public release of his contemporaneous private notes from the early pandemic, material that records both scientific assessments and the personal and political pressures of that period.