Anthony Fauci's own diary confirms that in January 2020, the majority of scientists on a private call told him the coronavirus likely came from a lab — and he spent the next three years destroying anyone who said so publicly.

This isn't a misunderstanding or a shift in evidence. It's the most consequential act of institutional deception in modern American history. The man who locked down this country, ruined millions of livelihoods, and green-limited censorship of dissent knew from Day One that the lab leak was credible — and he chose to bury it.

The 1,141 pages of diary entries, released by Sen. Rand Paul over the weekend, detail a conference call Fauci held with a dozen top scientists in January 2020 — before lockdowns, before the WHO declared a pandemic, before any of the damage was done. According to Breitbart's review, Fauci wrote: "There was not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate insertion" — referring to engineering of the virus. Only two scientists, Ron Fouchier and Christian Drosten, pushed back. "The rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible."

Fauci himself noted the obvious: Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at the University of Wuhan "has been working for years in GOF in coronaviruses to allow adaptation of the spike protein to bind to the human ACE2 receptor." He concluded: "we could not let this go."

Then he let it go. For years, Fauci publicly dismissed the lab leak as a wild conspiracy theory. In a May 2021 diary entry, he complained the press coverage of his "flip flopping" was getting "out of control," writing that he had "always said that the very highly likelihood is that the virus originated naturally from an animal reservoir jumping to a human." That is not what his January 2020 notes say.

The New York Post adds another layer of deception. Fauci's diary reveals he was in regular contact with David Morens — the senior adviser since indicted for concealing and deleting federal records — despite testifying under oath in June 2024 that he "knew nothing of Dr. Morens's actions regarding Dr. Daszak, EcoHealth, or his emails." Fauci even told lawmakers that "despite his title, functionally Dr. Morens was not an adviser to me on institute policy or other substantive issues." His diary tells a different story: Fauci wrote about arranging calls with Morens to get details on the growing controversy. Morens, meanwhile, emailed EcoHealth President Peter Daszak that there were "ongoing efforts within NIH to steer this through with minimal damage to you, Peter, and colleagues, and to NIH and NIAID." Morens also bragged he could send things to Fauci on his "private Gmail" to dodge FOIA. "He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble," Morens wrote.

NPR offered the establishment defense: Dartmouth virologist Felicia Goodrum suggested Fauci may have been less certain in private than he appeared in public because he had to reassure a panicking population. That's the argument used to justify every government lie — the public can't handle the truth, so the man in charge decides what to hide. It doesn't excuse deception; it indicts it further.

Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, subpoenaed Fauci after the former NIAID director refused to appear voluntarily. Fauci testifies Wednesday.

Fauci knew. His own hand wrote it down. The scientists told him the virus looked engineered, the Wuhan lab was doing gain-of-function work on exactly this kind of pathogen, and the evidence pointed to a lab. He responded by smearing anyone who said the same thing he had privately conceded. Three years of lockdowns, censorship, and ruined lives later, the only person facing consequences is a mid-level aide who deleted emails. The system protects its own. Wednesday's hearing will test whether anyone in Washington has the will to change that.