Tulsi Gabbard walked out of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the last time having lit a fuse behind her. On her final night as DNI, Gabbard released a cache of newly declassified documents that her office says expose Dr. Anthony Fauci's direct role in shaping, and, the agency alleges, manipulating, the intelligence community's assessment of COVID-19's origins. The move landed just as a messy succession fight over who will run America's spy agencies next consumed both parties on Capitol Hill.
The documents, released Thursday night and accompanied by a blistering ODNI press release, center on internal intelligence community emails from the period when federal agencies conducted a 90-day COVID origins study ordered by the president. Those emails, as Fox News reported, show officials debating how much weight to give Fauci's input, and whether his involvement created an unacceptable conflict of interest.
The ODNI press release did not hedge:
"Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus' lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives."
That is an extraordinary institutional accusation, issued not by a political campaign but by the nation's top intelligence office, in an official release. Whether the underlying documents fully support that charge is a question Congress will have to answer. But the fact that the DNI's own office published it, on the record, changes the landscape.
The emails reveal a tug-of-war inside the intelligence community over Fauci's role. One official, whose identity was redacted, wrote that he was leading the IC's 90-day presidential COVID origins study and that Fauci had recommended specific scientists, co-authors of a particular paper, for the IC to consult.
"Per below, Dr Fauci recommended that the IC reach out to the below individuals who were coauthors of the attached paper as part of the study."
A second official pushed back, questioning whether it was wise to take recommendations from a "policymaker." But a colleague defended the arrangement, arguing Fauci was not acting as a policymaker but as a subject-matter expert:
"In this particular case, given Dr Fauci's background we absolutely would like to follow-up on his outreach suggestions. In this case he's not a policymaker....he's a SME with a wealth of knowledge about current and historical research who probably knows better than most who the real Coronavirus experts are."
Intelligence officials ultimately rejected Fauci as a formal outside reviewer of the origins assessment, citing the conflict-of-interest concern. But the emails make clear that his recommendations on whom to interview carried real weight inside the review process.
That distinction matters. If Fauci was steering the IC toward scientists aligned with a preferred conclusion, as a CIA whistleblower has previously alleged, then the integrity of the entire origins assessment comes into question, even if Fauci never held a formal review title.
The ODNI press release goes further than describing influence. It accuses Fauci of lying under oath:
"These documents expose Fauci's direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research."
Fauci testified before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on June 3, 2024. The ODNI's claim is that the newly released documents contradict his sworn statements from that hearing.
Rep. Darrell Issa wasted no time pressing the point. In remarks covered by Breitbart, Issa called for a formal investigation on two counts: perjury before Congress and cover-up.
"It appears as though he willfully impeded Congress and everyone else in getting to the truth, which probably cost even more lives."
Issa argued the concealment may have cost additional lives and suggested that had the truth emerged earlier, it could have altered the political landscape of the 2020 presidential election.
Supporting documents add another layer. The New York Post reported that the declassified materials show Fauci met with CIA officials on June 4, 2021, just weeks after publicly denying to Congress that the National Institutes of Health had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. During that meeting, Fauci was described as "particularly interested" in WIV's work on pangolin samples and asked for specifics, yet gave the impression he was "presumably not tracking" the research.
That gap, between what Fauci told lawmakers under oath and what he apparently discussed behind closed doors with intelligence officials, is the core of the perjury allegation. The Post also reported that a whistleblower complaint alleging Fauci lied to Congress was redirected by then-DNI Avril Haines to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a fellow Biden political appointee, rather than to an impartial inspector general.
Routing a complaint about a senior official to a political ally of that official, rather than to an independent watchdog, is the kind of procedural maneuver that erodes public trust in government accountability. It is also, as previous whistleblower disclosures have suggested, part of a broader pattern in which the Biden-era intelligence community shielded Fauci from scrutiny.
Just The News reported that the declassified package runs several hundred pages and includes findings that a March 2020 scientific paper dismissing the lab-leak theory was influenced behind the scenes by Fauci. That paper, in turn, shaped the National Intelligence Council's understanding of COVID origins, meaning Fauci's fingerprints may have been on the very framework the IC used to evaluate the question he had a personal stake in.
Gabbard framed the release in personal terms. "After years of lies, censorship, and cover-ups, the American people deserve transparency, truth, and accountability," she said, as reported by Newsmax.
She also described the tactics allegedly used to conceal the truth as "straight from the deep state playbook," saying politicized leaders "covered up their own wrongdoing and abuses of power, manipulated intelligence, lied to Congress, and undermined a duly elected President by restricting his access to vital facts."
Gabbard's departure, she stepped down to care for her husband, who has a rare form of cancer, leaves the nation's intelligence apparatus in an awkward transition. Bill Pulte, a construction businessman and former director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is set to take the interim reins.
That prospect has drawn opposition from both sides of the aisle. Senate Majority Leader John Thune put it bluntly: "We don't need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there." Powerful Republican senators including John Cornyn, Bill Cassidy, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis have voiced concern.
Senate Democrats, among them Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Gary Peters, Adam Schiff, Mark Warner, and Ron Wyden, have expressed fears that Pulte would use the intelligence apparatus against the president's political opponents. Pulte's tenure at FHFA drew controversy over similar allegations, though those claims remain unconfirmed.
Meanwhile, Trump's permanent ODNI nominee, former SEC chairman Jay Clayton, remains in confirmation limbo. Trump has said he is holding up the nomination to pressure Congress on a voter identification measure, a separate legislative fight that has left the country's top intelligence post without a confirmed leader at a moment when the Fauci documents demand rigorous follow-up.
The declassified documents Gabbard released on her final day raise questions that will not resolve themselves. Did Fauci's recommendations steer the IC toward scientists predisposed to dismiss the lab-leak theory? Do the newly public emails directly contradict his 2024 sworn testimony? And why was a whistleblower complaint about potential perjury routed to a political appointee rather than an independent investigator?
Fauci's public response to the ODNI allegations does not appear in the available reporting. That silence may not last. But the documents are now public, and they paint a picture of an official who wielded enormous influence over the very intelligence process that was supposed to evaluate his own conduct, while telling Congress he had no such involvement.
The timing of these revelations, years after the pandemic reshaped American life, livelihoods, and liberties, only deepens the sting. Millions of Americans were told to trust the science and trust the experts. They deserved to know whether the experts were also working the refs.
Accountability delayed is accountability tested. Congress now has the documents. The question is whether anyone with subpoena power has the will to match.
