Newly released diary entries Republican lawmakers say were written by Dr.Anthony Fauci – the country's leading infectious disease specialist during the COVID-19 pandemic – chronicle Fauci's daily life between December 2019 and December 2022.The over 1,100 pages of entries span the final years of his tenure as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
He retired in December 2022.Sen.Rand Paul, R-Ky., posted the documents over the weekend, took them down on Monday evening and reposted them by Tuesday morning with redactions.
Paul also released a 465-page "prequel," a collection of Fauci documents including records and email exchanges from 2001 to 2015.This was all in advance of Wednesday's Senate hearing, where Fauci will testify.For the latest stories on the science of healthy living, subscribe to NPR's Health newsletter.The hearing follows years of debate about the pandemic's origins, and whether the virus that causes COVID-19 emerged from a Chinese laboratory.Paul chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and subpoenaed Fauci as the latest move in the pair's public disagreement about the origins of coronavirus.In a thread on X over the weekend, Paul wrote that the diary entries show what Fauci "wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories."A spokesperson for Fauci sent a document fact-checking Paul's claims and a letter written by Fauci's legal team to Paul last month.In that letter, Fauci's lawyers wrote Paul was waging a "years-long public crusade" against Fauci."You are single-mindedly fixating on seeing Dr.
Fauci prosecuted for imaginary crimes, and you are so invested in that outcome that you have created a personal brand around it," says the letter, which NPR reviewed.Paul did not respond to NPR's requests for comment in time for publication.It is also unclear how Paul obtained the Fauci diary documents, though a video posted Tuesday on X by Health Secretary R...