Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified 67 documents on her final day in office proving Anthony Fauci personally steered U.S. intelligence toward a natural-origin narrative for COVID-19 while a whistleblower complaint accusing him of lying to Congress was quietly killed by political appointees — and the man who could have faced prison for it walked away with a Biden pardon.
The stakes are straightforward: the government's top infectious disease official used his access to the Intelligence Community to cover his own role in funding the very research that likely started a pandemic, and the intelligence apparatus let him do it. Americans who lost loved ones, lost businesses, and lost years of their lives still don't have accountability.
The documents, released Thursday, detail Fauci's June 4, 2021 meeting with the CIA's Weapons and Counterproliferation Mission Center. Fauci "keyed in on specifics" about the Wuhan Institute of Virology's experiments on pangolin samples while giving the impression he was "presumably not tracking" that same research, according to a meeting summary cited by the New York Post. He pushed the CIA to continue down the natural-origin path and recommended the IC contact specific scientists who backed that theory — including authors of a paper pushing natural origin. An unidentified intelligence official wrote that Fauci "probably knows better than most who the real Coronavirus experts are."
Gabbard said the IC "almost always incorporated Fauci's recommendations."
The New York Post noted the documents "do not appear to expand on what is known about Fauci's funding for the Wuhan lab" — the money pipeline through EcoHealth Alliance, which modified bat coronaviruses to make them more infectious in human cells, was already documented. What's new is the scale of Fauci's direct involvement in shaping the intelligence narrative.
At the CIA meeting, Fauci was told that WIV staff had fallen ill in fall 2019 before the virus swept the globe. Rather than raising alarms about a possible lab leak, Fauci pivoted to criticizing Beijing's cleaning of the Huanan Seafood Market — redirecting focus to the wet market theory, according to the New York Post.
The cover extended beyond the CIA. After Fauci's meeting, a whistleblower complaint landed at ODNI alleging Fauci lied to Congress about gain-of-function research — a crime carrying up to five years in prison. Then-DNI Avril Haines didn't send it to the HHS inspector general. She sent it to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a fellow political appointee, as the New York Post reported. ODNI's acting inspector general Tamara Johnson wrote that the complaint alleged Fauci provided false testimony to Congress related to gain-of-function research. The referral to Becerra effectively buried it.
Gabbard also said she found proof of retaliation against intelligence officials who advocated for the lab-leak hypothesis over the natural-origin line Fauci pushed.
Fauci's 2024 congressional testimony now looks even more suspect. Asked whether he had spoken to any U.S. intelligence agency about viral research, Fauci replied: "I can't give you the specifics of it" — before pivoting to discussions of anthrax, as the Daily Wire reported.
Senator Rand Paul, who has referred Fauci to the DOJ multiple times, promised further action. "More to come," he said.
But the window for criminal charges has closed. Fauci survived the five-year statute of limitations, and President Biden issued a blanket pardon on his way out of office. The intelligence community incorporated Fauci's recommendations. The political apparatus shielded him from a whistleblower complaint. And the pardon locked the door. The only thing left is the record — which Gabbard made sure exists.
