Thousands of pages of emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci were recently made public, and they revealed a trove of new information about President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser not previously known to the public.
Fauci was discussing everything from gain-of-function research to the efficacy of masks beginning in the earliest days of the pandemic. Here are the top six revelations from his emails:
Infectious Disease Expert Told Fauci In January 2020 That COVID-19 Looked Potentially Engineered
Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease expert at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, emailed Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020 to alert him to the possibility that COVID-19 was engineered in a lab. “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered,” Andersen said.
He changed his tune just days later, referring to theories that COVID-19 was engineered as “crackpot theories.”
Fauci acknowledged receipt of the initial email, thanking him and saying they would “talk soon.” Andersen later published a paper in Nature attempting to dispel the lab-leak theory, which was cited by Fauci in the months after. (RELATED: ‘You Have To Be Asleep Not To See That’: Fauci Claims Attacks On Him Are Really ‘Attacks On Science’)
Biden Claimed Trump “Muzzled” Fauci — But Emails Reveal Fauci Said Otherwise
Biden has claimed at multiple points that former President Donald Trump prevented Fauci from speaking the truth about the pandemic, but Fauci’s own emails refute that assertion.
Fauci was emphatic in his private correspondence last year that Trump never “muzzled” him — contrary to what the Biden Admin now alleges pic.twitter.com/2Rjoa9X97K
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 1, 2021
Fauci implied it could be the case himself in a January 2021 interview with The New York Times: “The people around him, his inner circle, were quite upset that I would dare publicly contradict the president. That’s when we started getting into things I felt were unfortunate and somewhat nefarious — namely, allowing Peter Navarro to write an editorial in USA Today saying I’m wrong on most of the things I say. Or to have the White House press office send out a detailed list of things I said that turned out to be not true — all of which were nonsense because they were all true. The very press office that was making decisions as to whether I can go on a TV show or talk to you.”
However, Fauci assured people that wasn’t the case in his private correspondence. “Please stay silent since I have not been muzzled,” he wrote to a Thomas Murray in March 2020. “I will be on multiple TV shows tomorrow and was on FOX this AM. No one is censoring me.”
In another email the following day, he reiterated the point: “I could not possibly be more public about this. No censor. No muzzle. Free to speak out.”
Chinese CDC Director Apologized To Fauci After Appearing To Promote Masks
Fauci’s guidance on masks was infamously different early in the pandemic compared to what it has been since. That may be why Chinese CDC head Dr. George Gao apologized to Fauci in March 2020 for the perception that he may have promoted masks in a recent interview.
“The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren’t wearing masks,” Gao reportedly said in an interview with Science Magazine published March 2020. The following day, he emailed Fauci to assure him that the interview was tainted by a “journalist’s wording.”
“It was NOT a real interview,” Gao insisted. “I understand completely. No problem,” Fauci replied.
U.S. Researcher With Ties To Wuhan Lab Personally Thanked Fauci In April 2020 For Dispelling Lab Leak Theory “Myths”
Dr. Peter Daszak, head of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which shared millions of dollars of NIH grant money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology over a span of several years. After a lab-leak theory of COVID-19 origin began gaining some traction in the early days of the pandemic, Daszak took multiple steps to try and repress discussion of the possibility.
In April 2020, he thanked Fauci for aiding him in that effort. “I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Daszak said to Fauci in the email.
Fauci had downplayed the possibility of a lab-leak origin at a White House press briefing, spawning the appreciation from Daszak. A significant portion of Daszak’s email was redacted with a FOIA exemption indicating that the text may interfere with law enforcement proceedings. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: DeSantis Tears Into Fauci After Leaked Emails Reignite Wuhan Lab Leak Theories)
Fauci Had Some Level Of Concern About Being Publicly Tied To Gain-Of-Function Research
Fauci has long been a defender of dangerous gain-of-function research, but in the early days of the pandemic, he was concerned about possible links between the NIH and the research at the Wuhan lab. Fauci’s emails reveal that he directed his deputy Hugh Auchincloss to examine the type of research being done at the Wuhan lab and any possible link to the NIH grants that made their way to the lab.
“The paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause [in October 2014] but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH,” Auchincloss emailed Fauci. “Not sure what that means since Emily is sure that no Coronavirus work has gone through the P3 framework. She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.”
Fauci Was Speaking With Mark Zuckerberg About Facebook’s Information Policies
Some of Fauci’s emails show that Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg was seeking advice from Fauci on how to craft Facebook’s policies for steering users to accurate health information. The emails prompted House Republicans to request all communications between the two to determine if Fauci played a role in guiding Facebook’s decision to censor some information, including discussion of the lab-leak theory.
Very exciting. pic.twitter.com/eENFc1Yzxx
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 2, 2021
Adding to the skepticism is the fact that some of the communications between Fauci and Zuckerberg were redacted in the FOIA release. “Why did the government say, ‘Oh no-no, you can’t see what is in communication with the highest-paid official in our government, Dr. Fauci, and the head of one of the biggest companies on the planet. You’re not allowed to see what they’re talking about,” Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told Fox Business.