Senate Homeland Security Chairman Rand Paul claims his committee has found previously unknown gain-of-function research programs in Anthony Fauci's communications, and says a former aide who allegedly destroyed government emails is now headed for a Justice Department referral.
Paul's committee tried Wednesday to pass a measure granting prosecutorial immunity to a former top Fauci aide so she could testify about the alleged destruction of federal records. Senate Democrats blocked the effort, denying the two-thirds majority required. The aide had appeared before the committee the previous Friday, brought lawyers, and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
The failed vote sets up a direct confrontation between Paul and the Justice Department. The Kentucky Republican told Just the News he will refer the aide to federal prosecutors within one to two weeks if she does not cooperate voluntarily, a path that bypasses the committee vote Democrats just blocked.
Paul said his investigators discovered the alleged destruction by examining records Fauci kept on a government computer, logs that included phone records, computer files, and a personal diary. In one exchange, Paul said, the aide sent Fauci an email that amounted to a confession.
"By looking at Anthony Fauci's logs that he was keeping on a government computer, we discovered that his assistant was bragging to him in one of the emails. 'Hey, Dr. Fauci, I was able to destroy tons of your emails this weekend.' Well, that's illegal."
Paul asserted the destruction violates the Federal Records Act, which requires the preservation of government emails. He said the committee's goal was never to pursue the aide herself but to learn who ordered the deletions, how long the practice lasted, and whether hundreds or thousands of emails were destroyed.
"We presume Anthony Fauci. How many years she'd been doing this? Whether it was hundreds or thousands of emails? What kind of topics? And so, really, we're more interested in the guy who gave the orders because I think that's where most of the culpability is."
The pattern Paul describes is not new to the broader COVID-origins investigation. Emails previously obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed that Dr. David Morens, a senior adviser to Fauci at the National Institutes of Health, used personal Gmail accounts to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests and admitted to deleting messages he did not want made public. In one email to EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak, Morens wrote: "I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA'd, but before the search starts. So I think we are all safe." NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak confirmed that Morens had breached agency policy by deleting records after public records requests were filed.
Paul had previously requested a DOJ investigation into Morens. The new referral involving Fauci's unnamed executive assistant represents a second front in the same fight over destroyed federal records.
Beyond the record-destruction claims, Paul said his committee uncovered references to gain-of-function research programs, experiments that enhance a pathogen's transmissibility or lethality, that had never been publicly disclosed. He promised more details within a week.
"We will have some more explosive information that comes out in the next week, though, that some of the communications between Anthony Fauci and his assistant involved some programs that are very worrisome, gain-of-function programs that we didn't know existed until we came across these emails."
Paul, who holds a medical degree and specializes in ophthalmologic surgery, said he believes most active gain-of-function work is classified under bioweapons or biodefense programs, and that Congress is largely shut out of oversight. He cited data on the frequency of lab accidents in the United States and abroad, though he did not provide specific figures during the interview.
"But there are certain experiments where you're creating viruses that are more transmissible through the air that are a death wish. It's not that I suspect our government's going to release it on purpose. I suspect an accident will happen."
His concern is not hypothetical paranoia. It is the same argument he has pressed since the earliest days of the pandemic: that the risks of engineering more dangerous pathogens outweigh any defensive benefit, and that the secrecy surrounding these programs makes meaningful oversight nearly impossible.
In a striking intra-party dispute, Paul accused Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, of actively obstructing his investigation. Paul said Cotton wrote to the Director of National Intelligence requesting that no information about classified gain-of-function programs be shared with the Homeland Security Committee.
"There's an internal fight in Congress. So Tom Cotton is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. He is doing everything he possibly can to prevent us from getting information about these programs. He has written to the Director of National Intelligence and said that he does not want any information shared with our committee."
Paul argued that even if Cotton's committee retained jurisdiction over classified material, the real problem is the absence of independent scientific review. He said he relies on outside scientists to evaluate classified research because the programs are too technical for lawmakers alone, and that no skeptical scientists are currently reviewing whether the experiments should proceed at all.
Cotton has not publicly responded to Paul's characterization of the letter or his role in limiting information sharing. The dispute raises an uncomfortable question for Republicans: if the party controls both committees, why is oversight of dangerous research still being bottlenecked from within?
The current standoff follows months of escalating confrontation between Paul's committee and Fauci himself. During a July 29 hearing before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times, refusing to answer questions from senators of both parties. He cited Paul's previous public comments about wanting to see him incarcerated as justification for his refusal, National Review reported.
That hearing was prompted by the release of Fauci's personal diary, which revealed significant gaps between what he knew privately and what he told the public. The diary showed that during a February 1, 2020, call with scientists, ten of twelve participants believed "deliberate insertion was possible", a reference to the theory that the virus was engineered. Eight days later, Fauci publicly dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory. The diary also showed Fauci privately agreed COVID-19's mortality rate was between 0.2 and 0.3 percent, but he testified before Congress one month later that the rate was between 1 and 3 percent.
Sen. Roger Marshall pressed the point at the hearing: "Why are there so many discrepancies in what was in his diary versus what he told us, what he told the public?"
Paul's committee subsequently referred Fauci to the Justice Department for possible prosecution for contempt of Congress. But President Biden granted Fauci a pardon in the final days of his administration, effectively shielding him from criminal liability. Constitutional experts have argued that the pardon eliminates Fauci's legal basis for invoking the Fifth Amendment, since the privilege protects against self-incrimination, and a pardoned individual faces no criminal jeopardy from testimony.
Fauci, for his part, has denied all wrongdoing. In prior congressional testimony, he called the accusation that he bribed scientists with grant money to change their conclusions "absolutely false, and simply preposterous." He also denied covering up the possibility of a lab origin, saying "the truth is exactly the opposite."
The immunity vote was designed to break the impasse. By granting the former aide protection from prosecution, the committee hoped to compel her testimony about who ordered the email destruction, how extensive it was, and what subjects the deleted messages covered. Democrats denied the two-thirds majority needed.
Paul framed the DOJ referral as the natural next step, and one that does not require a committee vote. The Washington Examiner reported that Paul and Republican colleagues are pursuing the referral as an alternative path after the Democratic blockade.
"Within a week or two, if we don't get that cooperation, what's going to happen is she will be referred to the Department of Justice, and see, they don't have to vote at the Department of Justice. They don't have to vote on indicting someone. They have to say they broke the law, and they don't have to vote on offering someone immunity."
Paul compared the approach to standard prosecutorial strategy: grant immunity to lower-level figures to build a case against the person who gave the orders. "It's a typical way prosecutors act," he said. "You give immunity to the lower echelon people to get them to give information on who was giving the illegal orders to them."
Whether the Justice Department acts on the referral remains an open question. The department has already received the committee's contempt referral against Fauci himself, and its handling of that matter has not been publicly disclosed. Biden's pardon complicates the legal landscape further, though it does not cover potential crimes committed by other individuals.
The pattern is now familiar: evidence surfaces, witnesses invoke the Fifth, Democrats block procedural tools, and pardons arrive just in time. At some point, the question stops being whether anyone will be held accountable and starts being whether the system was designed to make sure no one ever is.
