Anthony Fauci

David Morens, a senior scientific adviser at NIAID, acknowledged using a personal email account for certain official communications, and messages mentioned a private channel with Fauci. In April 2026, Morens was indicted on charges relating to alleged concealment or deletion of federal records.

State of the evidence

Unproven

Role of the person profiled

Protagonist not prosecuted

In June 2026, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents and accused Fauci of influencing the assessment of COVID's origins, supporting risky research and misleading Congress.

Attribution

Directly implicated

On 29 July 2026, Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a Senate hearing on COVID's origins and his earlier statements. On 6 August, the committee voted along party lines to hold him in contempt of Congress and refer the matter to the Justice Department.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Protagonist is a witness

Joe Biden granted Fauci a pre-emptive federal pardon covering an extensive period of his public service, explaining that he wished to protect him from prosecutions he regarded as politically motivated under the incoming Trump administration.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

The NIAID led by Fauci funded EcoHealth Alliance, which subawarded part of the funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study bat coronaviruses. Elected representatives accused Fauci of misleading Congress by denying that the NIH funded 'gain-of-function' research, while the agencies invoked narrower regulatory definitions.

State of the evidence

Disputed

Fauci participated in a call on 1 February 2020 with virologists examining the characteristics of SARS-CoV-2. Some scientists had initially expressed concerns about a laboratory origin before their analysis evolved. Republican lawmakers accused Fauci of influencing the authors of 'Proximal Origin' and suggested that grants had been provided in return.

NIH data showed that Fauci received 37 royalty payments between 2010 and 2021. Some publications presented these as evidence that he had secretly profited from COVID vaccines, but the identified payments came notably from Santa Cruz Biotechnology and were not all related to COVID vaccines.

State of the evidence

Allegations

Attribution

Directly implicated

Organisations and elected officials accused Fauci of funding cruel experiments on beagles, including research involving sandflies in Tunisia. NIAID did fund several studies using dogs, but the most widely circulated Tunisian study had been incorrectly attributed to NIAID in a publication, and that attribution was corrected.

At the beginning of the outbreak, Fauci explained that the immediate risk to the American population was then low and that Americans did not yet need to change their daily lives. These remarks were subsequently used to accuse him of having downplayed the danger.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

On 8 March 2020, Fauci stated that ordinary people did not need to walk around wearing a mask all the time. A few weeks later, the CDC and Fauci supported widespread face covering, prompting accusations of inconsistency or lying.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

Fauci raised his public estimates of the herd immunity threshold from approximately 60–70% to 70–75%, then 75–80% or higher. He acknowledged that this evolution reflected both new scientific estimates and his assessment of the public's willingness to accept higher figures.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated

At the height of the AIDS crisis, ACT UP activists strongly attacked the pace of federal trials, their inclusion criteria and what they regarded as excessively slow access to experimental treatments. Fauci, the NIAID director, was personally targeted before developing a dialogue with activists and supporting the 'parallel track' mechanism.

State of the evidence

Documented

Attribution

Directly implicated