Two Republican senators have released the first batch of text messages retrieved from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former government phone as part of an investigation into his leadership and actions during the Covid-19 pandemic – including messages in which he discusses the possible risks and safety of the vaccine during pregnancy.
Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky released the texts publicly online Monday, after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided Fauci’s iPhone to a Senate subcommittee investigating him.
The phone contained more than 34,000 messages and 522 voicemails, said the senators in a news release. They published screenshots showing a fraction of these – 11 texts sent during Fauci’s tenure as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
In one exchange on January 25, 2021, Dr. Vivek Murthy, then a member of President Joe Biden’s Covid advisory board, asked about any potential risk to those who are pregnant, or whether Fauci knew of any “data or theoretical reason why vaccinating early vs late in pregnancy would be preferred.”
Fauci responded that there was “no data or theoretical reason to believe that vaccinating early versus later in pregnancy would be preferred.”
