At a hearing on covid-19, the former infectious-disease official is expected to again fend off claims that he covered up the pandemic’s origins.
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Anthony S. Fauci, the infectious disease expert who helped lead the U.S. government’s response to covid-19, is set to face longtime adversary Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and other Republicans on Wednesday as Fauci — again — defends himself from claims that he covered up the pandemic’s origins.
The hearing, convened by Paul, represents Senate Republicans’ latest attempt to probe whether Fauci and his colleagues were sufficiently forthcoming about the possibility that the outbreak began with a lab leak in Wuhan, China.
In recent days, Paul has released more than a thousand pages of Fauci’s personal records, including his dealings with reporters and his unvarnished thoughts on President Donald Trump and other officials. Paul has also argued that Fauci, a longtime senior official at the National Institutes of Health, attempted to downplay that his agency funded coronavirus research in Wuhan before the pandemic began.
“Fauci and his team destroyed public trust in the CDC and our public health institutions,” Paul wrote on social media on Tuesday. “Accountability is long overdue.”
The 85-year-old Fauci, who last faced the Senate in September 2022 and retired from government later that year, has persistently denied Paul’s claims about a cover-up. His allies have also dismissed Paul’s investigation as baseless, pointing to examples of Fauci publicly acknowledging the possibility that the virus leaked from a lab, beginning in early 2020.
“No credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges,” more than 150 scientists, physicians and other Fauci supporters wrote in an open letter released Tuesday. “These conspiracy theories have led to a five-year period of harassment and threats of violence directed at Dr. Fauci and his family.”
A spokesman for Fauci declined to comment ahead of the hearing.
Infectious-disease experts have also insisted to Paul and other Republicans that while the NIH funded virus research in Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak was first detected in 2019, the work could not have sparked the pandemic.
But Paul and his allies appear to be winning the battle for public opinion.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents to a May 2025 Economist/YouGov poll said it was probably or definitely true that covid-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory, while 17 percent said that was probably or definitely false. Another 25 percent were unsure.
Trump and his White House have embraced the idea too, creating a website that calls a lab leak the “true” origin of the pandemic, without sharing any definitive proof.
Paul, who assumed control of the Senate’s government oversight panel in 2025 after Republicans won control of the chamber, has spent years investigating the origins of covid-19. Beginning in 2020, Paul has used congressional hearings to grill Fauci over that issue and his handling of the pandemic generally. Videos of their tense exchanges have circulated on social media.
Paul and his allies are expected Wednesday to press Fauci on his past statements under oath to Congress and whether his personal records and other documents show that he committed perjury. Fauci was preemptively pardoned by President Joe Biden before he left office, with Biden saying that Fauci and other officials receiving preemptive pardons had not committed wrongdoing but were at risk from the incoming Trump administration.
Fauci, who last faced off with Paul publicly in 2022, has repeatedly denied accusations from the GOP senator and other Republicans. In a 2021 hearing, Fauci told Paul that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research” — a type of research involving the manipulation of viruses or other microbes — at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci in 2024 also battled GOP lawmakers at a House hearing, his most recent appearance in front of Congress, dismissing some of their allegations as “simply preposterous.”
In 2023, Paul published a book about what he called the “Great Covid Cover-Up” — featuring a photo of Fauci wearing a mask on the cover — and during the pandemic he solicited campaign donations through a website calling for Fauci to be fired.
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Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Paul released a slew of documents that have been embarrassing for Fauci and created new complications for him. In one release, Fauci published internal NIH emails that appear to show Fauci and his colleagues strategizing about how to win prizes during the pandemic, an issue that Paul told Fox News he plans to raise at the hearing.
The GOP senator on Saturday also published what he coined “Tony’s Diary”: more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal records from during the pandemic, including notes on internal meetings and exchanges with reporters from outlets including CNN and The Washington Post. The diary also contains blunt criticism of fellow senior officials across multiple administrations.
Paul and some conservative commentators have criticized Fauci for alleged inconsistencies between his private notes and public statements and accused him of appearing to celebrate his media exposure during the pandemic.
“Aside from hiding what he knew about COVID origins, Fauci’s diary reveals his love for the newfound fame COVID brought him,” Paul wrote in a social media post.
A spokesman for Fauci declined to comment on the diary.
Some of Fauci’s past colleagues and allies, approached for comment by The Post this week, also declined to speak on the record, saying they were still reviewing Fauci’s private writing or feared that their remarks could be used against Fauci in Wednesday’s hearing.
Paul’s and Fauci’s confrontations in Senate hearings have gotten ugly and, at times, appeared to dip into a personal animus. In 2021, Paul suggested Fauci had lied about NIH funding in Wuhan, which Fauci denied. In a hearing the following year, Fauci accused Paul of political attacks that were putting his personal safety at risk.
Fauci, whose infectious-disease research has been widely cited, also said in hearings that Paul, a trained ophthalmologist, was misconstruing the science behind virus research.
Paul later campaigned on promises to subpoena Fauci’s documents and hold him accountable for a “coverup.”
Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Paul seemed gleeful about the rematch. “See you in 2 days,” Paul wrote in one social media post, with an image of a magazine cover Fauci posed for in September 2020. The InStyle cover featured Fauci posing poolside, wearing sunglasses, above the headline “The Good Doctor.”
Paul last year issued subpoenas to 14 federal agencies demanding unclassified records related to the pandemic’s origins. In May, he invited CIA whistleblower John Erdman to testify on the alleged cover-up of how the virus originated. Erdman claimed intelligence and Biden administration officials, including Fauci, who also served in Trump’s first administration, obscured evidence that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory.
Mystery around the origin of covid-19 has for years fanned debate, and the Economist/YouGov poll shows Americans distrust the government’s explanations. Biden in May 2021 asked intelligence agencies to probe the origins of the virus, but they could not reach a consensus. Most favored, with “low confidence,” the theory that the virus came from infected animals, as opposed to a lab leak.
The CIA in January 2025 said, also with “low confidence,” that it now favors a Chinese laboratory leak as the most likely origin of the pandemic.
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