(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The diary of disgraced former White House COVID czar Anthony Fauci reveals a stark contrast between his private views and his public messaging on several pandemic-era controversies, including the lab leak theory and school closures.
The diary, released Sunday by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., spans more than 1,000 pages and chronicles Fauci’s government role from December 2019 through December 2022.
Among the entries, Fauci acknowledged that the theory COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan laboratory was plausible, despite publicly dismissing the theory as fringe during the pandemic.
The diary also undercuts Fauci’s claims to the media that he had “nothing to do” with widespread school closures.
PUBLICLY: I had nothing to do with closing schools!
PRIVATELY: I got NY and CA to close schools❤️✊ https://t.co/Ho30giL5RT pic.twitter.com/9M84CLk4GA— Matt Orfalea (@0rf) July 27, 2026
In one alleged entry, Fauci wrote that he “convinced” then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to “close the NYC schools.” He added in the same entry that “he should close bars and restaurants in NYC.”
Fauci also wrote that California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff, Ann O’Leary, told him Newsom decided to close schools, bars and restaurants based on Fauci’s television appearances.
Paul also released a 465-page prequel to the diary on Monday, covering Fauci’s government service from 2001 through 2015.
According to Paul, the earlier diary suggests Fauci knew the public “wasn’t getting the truth about anthrax” during the 2001 attacks.
One entry states that officials at the Army’s infectious disease laboratory reportedly told Fauci anthrax had been “weaponized.” Fauci said he was “floored” after he heard the head of the Office of Homeland Security seemingly appeared on television downplaying the threat.
Fauci warned that “someone is intentionally not telling Gov. Ridge the truth or he is masking the truth,” adding that “there will be hell to pay when the American public realizes that they have not been dealt with in a totally open manner.”
According to Paul, Fauci also asked then-Vice President Dick Cheney for “DARPA-like powers” when asked what he needed to run biodefense efforts at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
As noted by Paul, “Part of what was driving that buildup, by his own account, was ‘CIA intelligence that Iraq has smallpox’ – the basis for plans to vaccinate as many as 10 million Americans.”
In another entry, Fauci criticized the CIA following a 2008 White House meeting on “drug- and vaccine-resistant anthrax.”
Fauci reportedly wrote that CIA officials delivered “vague, soft and even embarrassingly bad intelligence.” These meetings were the kind he had sat through “several times before,” the entry alleged.
“One gets a very bad impression of the quality of our intelligence based on meetings such as this,” Fauci wrote, according to Paul.
The documents are among a broader collection of records released by Paul ahead of what is expected to be a contentious Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday. Paul obtained the files through his oversight of the federal government.
