On her final day as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard released hundreds of pages of internal documents alleging that Dr. Anthony Fauci directed millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then lied about it under oath, manipulated intelligence community assessments, and benefited from a system that quietly shielded him from a whistleblower complaint that could have exposed his conduct years ago.
The files, released Friday and reported by the New York Post, include internal emails, meeting summaries, and a whistleblower complaint referral chain that together paint a damning picture: senior intelligence officials under the Biden administration routed a formal complaint about Fauci's congressional testimony away from an impartial inspector general and into the hands of a political appointee, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden's chief medical adviser, has long denied that NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. But the documents show that behind closed doors, he was deeply engaged with CIA investigators on the very questions he publicly dismissed, and that the bureaucratic machinery around him worked to keep the whistleblower's allegations from ever getting a fair hearing.
The paper trail begins on August 11, 2021, when ODNI acting inspector general Tamara Johnson emailed then-DNI Avril Haines about a whistleblower complaint targeting Fauci. Johnson described the core allegation plainly:
"The complaint alleges Dr. Fauci provided false testimony to Congress related to the conduct of gain of function research at the National Institutes of Health, thereby 'misleading the American people and Congressional oversight.'"
But Johnson's office dismissed the complaint before it could gain traction. Her rationale: the allegedly false statement came from "a non-IC official" and pertained to "an activity that the IC IG has no reason to believe is related to an intelligence activity." The complaint, she concluded, "does not meet the urgent concern standard."
That determination alone might have been defensible on narrow procedural grounds. What happened next was not.
Approximately one week later, Christopher Fonzone, Haines's top lawyer, reached out to the DNI after reviewing transcripts of Fauci's congressional appearances. Fonzone identified the likely basis for the whistleblower's complaint: Fauci's exchanges with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at hearings on May 11 and July 20.
At the May 11 hearing, Fauci had told Congress flatly: "The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute." When Paul confronted him about that claim at the July 20 hearing, Fauci stood behind it.
Fonzone's internal communication reveals a telling detail about how the complaint was ultimately handled. Rather than referring it to the HHS inspector general, the impartial oversight body designed for exactly this kind of allegation, Fonzone updated the draft letter to send it to Secretary Becerra, a fellow political appointee in the Biden administration.
"I think the key thing is that what we've seen is consistent with the point that Secretary Becerra made to you, that this is something they've considered and that Dr. Fauci has point he's repeated about the NIH not funding gain-of-function at the WIV."
In other words, the complaint was routed to a cabinet member who had already accepted Fauci's defense. The fox was asked to investigate the henhouse, and the inspector general was cut out entirely.
The released files also include a summary of a June 4, 2021 meeting in which Fauci briefed CIA officials on the COVID-19 pandemic. The details of that briefing sit uneasily alongside Fauci's public posture at the time.
Fauci "was particularly interested in the WIV's work on pangolins and asked for specifics on the type of experiments the Chinese were conducting on pangolin samples in the fall of 2019," the document states. Yet the summary also notes that Fauci gave the impression he was "presumably not tracking" that research, a characterization that raises the question of whether Fauci was genuinely unaware of work funded through channels connected to his own agency, or was performing ignorance for an audience of intelligence officials.
Gabbard's tenure as DNI was marked by aggressive declassification efforts, including her revelation that the U.S. funded more than 120 biolabs across 30-plus countries, a disclosure that rattled the national security establishment.
Fauci also "highlighted the importance of getting samples from the individuals at WIV who were ill in the fall of 2019," the document says. He expressed concern about Beijing's "quick and thorough cleaning of the Huanan Seafood Market," noting that the Chinese government "may have made a serious epidemiological misstep that could have destroyed key clues as to how the pandemic began."
The document further reveals that Fauci gave CIA investigators specific instructions, though those details were redacted, and urged the intelligence community to connect with three doctors described as more aligned with the natural origins theory. The names of those doctors were not disclosed in the released materials.
The picture that emerges is of a man who privately acknowledged the significance of lab-related evidence while publicly steering the conversation toward natural origins, and who used his access to intelligence officials to shape the very investigation that could have implicated him.
The documents released by Gabbard fit into a broader pattern that has become clearer over the past several years. The nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which received NIH funding, modified at least three bat coronaviruses and found they became much more infectious when human-type receptors were added, work conducted at the Wuhan lab. Meanwhile, Fauci maintained under oath that no gain-of-function research was funded there.
The Washington Examiner reported that the released documents allege Fauci provided intelligence agencies with a list of experts that included Ralph Baric and Peter Daszak, both connected to Wuhan lab research and NIAID funding, to guide COVID origins investigations. Intelligence community whistleblowers also reportedly provided testimony alleging retaliation against analysts who supported the lab leak theory.
The CIA itself eventually concluded, with "low confidence", that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a lab. That announcement came shortly after President Trump was sworn back into office. The FBI and the Department of Energy, which runs its own network of labs and research facilities, had already leaned toward an iteration of the lab leak theory. Former CIA Director William Burns, who led the agency during the Biden administration, pressed for the CIA to stop being neutral on the question.
Fox News reported that newly declassified documents show intelligence officials rejected Fauci as an outside reviewer of their COVID-19 origins assessment due to conflict-of-interest concerns, a decision that suggests even within the intelligence community, some recognized the problem of letting Fauci shape the investigation into his own conduct.
Gabbard's declassification push also extended well beyond the Fauci files. Earlier in her tenure, she released records showing U.S. taxpayer funding for biological research labs in more than 30 countries, including facilities handling dangerous pathogens such as anthrax and Ebola. Newsmax reported that the release was tied to President Trump's Executive Order 14292, signed May 25, 2025, which terminated federal funding for gain-of-function research worldwide.
Those earlier disclosures prompted their own controversy. Declassified biolab records backed concerns that officials had once dismissed as misinformation, according to Gabbard, a claim that carried particular weight given how aggressively the previous administration and its media allies had policed public discussion of lab origins during the pandemic.
Lying to Congress is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. But Fauci survived the five-year deadline for criminal charges, a window that closed just over a month before the files were released. The Department of Justice is still reportedly considering how Fauci might face consequences for his role in the alleged coverup, though no charges have been filed.
Gabbard framed the release in stark terms.
"After years of lies, censorship, and cover-ups, the American people deserve transparency, truth, and accountability."
She went further in characterizing the institutional dynamics at work: "The tactics used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook: politicized self-serving leaders like Dr. Fauci 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 stepped down from her post to care for her husband, who is battling a rare cancer diagnosis. Bill Pulte is set to come in as acting DNI.
In a post on X, Gabbard summarized her final act in office. Just The News reported her statement: "I'm releasing how Dr. Fauci worked with politicized elements within the Intelligence Community to suppress the truth about his actions and hide the virus' lab-leak origins, and lied to Congress while under oath in 2024. It's time you know the truth."
Not every question is answered by these documents. The identity of the original whistleblower remains unknown. The specific investigative instructions Fauci gave the CIA remain redacted. The names of the three natural-origins-aligned doctors he recommended to intelligence officials have not been disclosed. And the files, by the Post's own assessment, do not appear to expand significantly on what was already publicly known about Fauci's funding of the Wuhan lab.
But what the documents do reveal is arguably more important than any single new fact. They show the mechanism, the emails, the legal memos, the routing decisions, by which a whistleblower complaint about one of the most powerful public health officials in American history was quietly diverted away from independent oversight and into the hands of allies. They show how a bureaucracy designed to protect the public instead protected one of its own.
Gabbard's own declassification efforts faced resistance from within the intelligence community, a reminder that the institutions involved in these decisions do not give up their secrets willingly.
The COVID-19 pandemic killed millions worldwide. The American people locked down their businesses, pulled their children from school, and buried their loved ones. They were told to trust the science, and the man who embodied that phrase was Anthony Fauci.
Now the documents show that while Fauci was telling Congress the NIH never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, he was privately asking CIA officials for details about experiments at that same lab. While a whistleblower tried to hold him accountable, Biden administration officials routed the complaint to a political ally. And while the statute of limitations ticked down, the machinery of government ran out the clock.
The American people didn't get transparency. They didn't get accountability. They got a five-year delay and a filing cabinet full of redactions. That's not how a government of the people is supposed to work, and no amount of bureaucratic proceduralism can make it right.
