Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, a retired obstetrician, is calling for a special counsel investigation into Dr. Anthony Fauci after newly released text messages show the former health official privately flagged miscarriage risks from COVID-19 vaccines while publicly telling pregnant women there were "no red flags."
Marshall appeared on Fox News' "Fox & Friends" to respond to a tranche of Fauci's government phone records that has reignited questions about whether America's most prominent pandemic official misled the public, and Congress, about what he knew and when he knew it.
The texts, dated January 25, 2021, show Fauci warning fellow health officials that the second dose of the mRNA vaccine could pose a specific danger to women in early pregnancy. In one message, Fauci wrote that he had been asking around and wanted colleagues to know about an emerging concern.
"Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester."
That private warning stands in sharp contrast to what Fauci told the American public just weeks later. In a CBS News interview the following month, the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases offered blanket reassurance.
"With thousands of women who are pregnant, having gotten the vaccine following the EUA [emergency use authorization], there have been no red flags of anything that anyone would be worried about."
Later that same year, Fauci went further, publicly urging pregnant women and those planning to become pregnant to get vaccinated, citing "severe adverse outcomes for mother and baby during COVID-19 infection." At no point in those public statements did he disclose the theoretical miscarriage risk he had flagged in private weeks earlier.
Marshall, who has clashed with Fauci for years over COVID-19 origins, pandemic policy, and government vaccine guidance, told Fox News that congressional oversight has hit a wall. The senator pointed to Fauci's repeated refusal to answer questions under oath as the core obstacle.
"All Congress can do is expose the truth or try to expose the truth, which is hard to do when a guy takes the 5th 111 times."
That claim, that Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times, underscores why Marshall believes the investigation needs to move beyond Capitol Hill. A special counsel, Marshall told Fox News, would carry tools Congress does not have.
"[A special counsel has] subpoena power. They can have an independent investigation, and then they can prosecute as well."
Marshall also floated the idea of a full 9/11-style commission as an alternative path but acknowledged that the decision on a special counsel ultimately rests with the attorney general. The Senate Health Committee has already referred Fauci to the Justice Department for investigation, though what action, if any, the DOJ has taken on that referral remains unclear.
The text messages did not involve Fauci alone. Just The News reported that the private exchange included Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, both of whom shared Fauci's concern. Murthy responded to Fauci's warning by calling it "a really good point re the cytokine storm post second dose." Walensky, for her part, expressed concern about mRNA causing mutations in a developing fetus.
All three officials went on to publicly promote COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant women in the months and years that followed. None disclosed the private doubts they had shared among themselves in January 2021.
That gap between private caution and public promotion is the central issue. Pregnant women were not included in the original COVID-19 vaccine trials. Officials knew the data on this population was limited. And yet the public message was unqualified reassurance, while anyone who raised similar concerns was, as Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill put it, dismissed.
"We were being told that we were anti-vaxxers and that we were liars who were trying to cause people to die from COVID."
Murrill is now investigating whether Fauci's private communications contradict his congressional testimony and deposition statements, a line of inquiry that could expose him to perjury charges.
The scope of unreleased material adds another dimension. Fauci's government-issued iPhone contained more than 34,000 text messages and 522 voicemails. Sens. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul released the first batch of just 11 messages from that cache, the Washington Examiner reported. Johnson's office framed the release as a matter of public health and informed consent, stating that the text chain "could have an immediate impact" on both.
The senators have not confirmed whether any data on the phone was deleted. That uncertainty raises its own questions about the completeness of the record, and about what the remaining 34,000-plus messages might reveal.
Fox News Digital contacted the law firm representing Fauci for comment and did not immediately hear back.
The timeline tells its own story. In January 2021, Fauci privately warned colleagues about a theoretical link between the vaccine's second dose and first-trimester miscarriage. By February 2021, he was on CBS News assuring the country that pregnant women who received the vaccine showed no red flags. By later that year, he was publicly declaring it "extremely important" for pregnant women to get vaccinated.
At no documented point in that sequence did Fauci or his colleagues publicly acknowledge the concerns they had discussed among themselves. The women making decisions about vaccination during pregnancy, decisions with potentially irreversible consequences, were not given the same information that the officials making recommendations had.
Breitbart noted that the officials were simultaneously working to counter World Health Organization guidance that had advised against vaccination during pregnancy. The CDC under the Trump administration ultimately removed the COVID-19 vaccine from the recommended immunization schedule for healthy pregnant women.
A separate bill proposing a lifetime ban on Fauci from federal government work has also been introduced, though the details and status of that legislation remain unclear from available reporting.
Marshall's call for a special counsel is not a request for political theater. It is a request for the one mechanism that can compel testimony, gather evidence independently, and bring charges if the facts warrant them. Congress referred Fauci to the Justice Department. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than a hundred times. His representatives have not responded to press inquiries. And 34,000 text messages sit largely unexamined.
The question is straightforward: Did the nation's top public health officials withhold known risks from pregnant women while publicly urging them to get vaccinated? The texts released so far suggest the answer is yes. The full record, if it is ever made public, will determine whether that failure was a lapse in judgment or something worse.
Pregnant women trusted these officials with two lives at once. They deserved the same candor Fauci reserved for his group chat.
