Dr. Anthony Fauci increasingly railed against “far right” critics of his approach to COVID-19 issues while describing strong support from the Biden White House in his pandemic-era diary, which was recently released by Congress.The former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director dismissed concerns around Chinese involvement in the virus’s creation and his statements on U.S.-funded research in Wuhan as right-wing propaganda or “conspiracy theories,” the 1,141-page document released Saturday shows. The diary gives a deeper-than-ever look at how Fauci privately viewed the controversies surrounding his decades in government work, including advising Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden about the coronavirus response.Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) have accused Fauci of misleading the public about whether his NIAID funded risky “gain-of-function” research in a poorly managed Wuhan lab that many suspect was the coronavirus pandemic’s cause. Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services found the writings on its servers and handed the diary to Paul, who released it to compare Fauci’s public and private statements.
‘Stressed beyond the limit’
Fauci referred to the “far right” more than 60 times in his complaints throughout the diary. The effect that Republicans’ Wuhan investigations and right-leaning media had on Fauci’s public image continuously bothered him, according to the writings.“This sounds very much like a way-out conspiracy theory, which it is,” he wrote in April 2021 regarding the lab-leak theory. “However, there are enough crazy people around to make this a problem.”“I get a lot of [Freedom of Information Act] requests regarding my financial statements as well as regarding text messages, written correspondence, and phone calls,” Fauci wrote the same month. “These are clearly directed at trying to catch me at something usually from conspiracy theorists but also from Republican operatives.”By September 2021, Fauci was writing that “dark web far right maniacs” had him “stressed beyond the limit” in bold, bright red font.In responding to one critical Fox News story in June 2021, Fauci exonerated himself by writing that Trump’s White House told him to “make up” legal reasoning for the NIAID canceling controversial Wuhan research.“They are accusing me [of] lying under oath at a House and energy subcommittee hearing when I said that I did not know the precise reason why [Trump] told us to cancel the Wuhan grant,” Fauci wrote. He said he warned Trump’s team it was illegal not to provide a reason, so “the White House came back and said make up a reason.”Fauci reiterated in a later entry: “The word came down from the White House predominantly via Mark Meadows that we should just go ahead and make up a reason but we definitely had to cancel the grant or else.”The former public health official also mused about forming a partnership with China’s government for a “good faith” effort to determine COVID-19’s origins, claiming “it is extremely unlikely [that] the Chinese are truly hiding anything substantive.” He complained that this would be impossible because “the environment in the United States is so toxic with regard to China and the delusions of the far right radicals.”Biden backed him ‘1000%,’ Harris was ‘delightful’
