Senate Homeland Security Chairman Rand Paul released Dr. Anthony Fauci's private diary entries ahead of the former COVID adviser's subpoenaed testimony, and the pages read less like a crisis log than a celebrity memoir.
On May 21, 2020, with nearly 98,000 people dead worldwide and more than 27,000 Americans in the grave from COVID-19, Fauci sat down and wrote about himself. His "national and international fame," he marveled, was "explosive and really unimaginable." It was "not hyperbole," he added, to call himself "the most famous and talked about person in the country."
That entry did not dwell on ventilator shortages, hospital capacity, or the families burying loved ones without funerals. It chronicled White House coronavirus task force meetings, and then pivoted to Fauci's assessment of his own star power. The man charged with guiding the nation's pandemic response was keeping score on press clippings.
The diary entries, first reported by Fox News, span the early months of the pandemic and were released by Paul's committee as part of its ongoing oversight investigation. Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, subpoenaed Fauci to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. That testimony is scheduled for the coming days.
The April 7, 2020, entry set the tone early. Fauci wrote:
"Press still hot and heavy about me. Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me."
By that point in the pandemic, thousands of Americans had already died. Hospitals in New York were overwhelmed. And the nation's top infectious disease official was journaling about column inches.
Fauci also noted that "countless" profiles had been written about him, several without even interviewing him, and that he eventually decided to stop participating in profile interviews altogether. But his frustration did not appear to stem from the distraction profiles created during a public health emergency. It stemmed from the friction they caused inside the White House.
White House communications officials, Fauci wrote, were upset because the coverage made it appear he was becoming "a star that outshines" the president. The Trump White House restricted his television appearances and denied his requests to appear on major programs. Fauci insisted in his diary that he had "no desire to conflict with, embarrass or show up the POTUS."
Roughly a month after the May 21 entry, the United States recorded what Fauci described as "a record 40,000 new COVID-19 cases in a single day." His diary entry for that period did not focus solely on the surge. He also noted that he had been invited to appear on "Dancing with the Stars."
By July 2, 2020, Fauci's tone shifted, but only partway. He warned the country could be entering an "exponential" increase in cases heading into the Fourth of July weekend. And he leveled a blunt accusation at the White House:
"POTUS and his people have essentially dropped out and do not even recognize that an outbreak is ongoing."
Yet even as he criticized the administration's posture, the diaries reveal a man who viewed his relationship with the president through the lens of personal celebrity. Fauci wrote that Trump "seems to be enamored of me even though I am taking the spotlight away from him," and described the two as developing "a very unique and interesting relationship."
Three weeks later, on July 23, 2020, Fauci threw the ceremonial first pitch at a Washington Nationals game, an image that became one of the pandemic's most recognizable photo-ops. Secret Service agents, the diary noted, had become so familiar with Fauci that they often waved him through White House security without checking his identification.
Paul, a longtime Fauci critic who clashed repeatedly with the former adviser over the federal pandemic response and the origins of COVID-19, released the diaries as part of a broader Senate investigation. The release comes at a moment when congressional scrutiny of the pandemic response, and the institutions that shaped it, continues to intensify.
That scrutiny extends well beyond Fauci's personal writings. Separate congressional investigations have zeroed in on the research pipeline that connected U.S. tax dollars to bat coronavirus work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, faces his own reckoning. His organization held over 15,000 coronavirus samples frozen at the Wuhan lab, and its controversial bat coronavirus research project was paused in July 2020 amid growing concerns about a possible lab leak. Daszak previously testified behind closed doors in November 2023, but documents obtained afterward conflicted with his testimony, prompting House committee chairs to write that the revelations "undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview."
Fauci led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and continued as chief medical adviser under President Joe Biden. The pandemic ultimately killed more than 7 million people worldwide, including roughly 1.2 million Americans. Those numbers dwarf the figures Fauci recorded in his spring 2020 entries, a reminder that the crisis was only beginning when he was already tallying his fame.
The released entries raise as many questions as they settle. Fauci has not publicly responded to the diary release or to Paul's subpoena, at least not in any statement included with the release. The full scope of the Senate oversight investigation remains unclear, as does whether additional documents were released alongside the diary package.
Paul's committee posted the diary entries in a document package on the Senate website. What Fauci will say under oath, and whether the diaries will feature in his questioning, remains to be seen.
But the pages already released paint a portrait that no testimony can easily erase. While Americans were dying, locked down, and cut off from dying relatives, the man in charge of the nation's pandemic guidance was marveling at his own fame, fielding reality-TV invitations, and measuring his star against the president's.
Washington has no shortage of officials who confuse public service with personal brand-building. Few have left a written record of it this detailed, or this damning.
