The world was just awakening to the novel coronavirus, and a full-fledged pandemic was still in the future, when Dr. Anthony S. Fauci jotted a note in his diary on Jan. 26, 2020, musing about whether the virus might have originated in an open-air \u201cwet market,\u201d where live animals were sold, in Wuhan, China.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,\u201d Dr. Fauci, then the government\u2019s top infectious disease expert, wrote. \u201cHaving said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those private reflections became public this past weekend when Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, released more than 1,100 pages<\/a> of Dr. Fauci\u2019s typewritten daily notes as part of his investigation into whether the virus might have leaked from a laboratory and whether, as Mr. Paul claims, Dr. Fauci lied to Congress about it.<\/p>\n The diary does not provide the smoking gun the senator is seeking. Rather, it echoes past disclosures showing Dr. Fauci wrestling with a fast-moving crisis as scientists\u2019 views evolved. But it further inflames a polarizing political battle over the origins of the virus and how history should treat Dr. Fauci.<\/p>\n It also paints a portrait of Dr. Fauci as obsessed with himself, reveling in his own importance and the celebrities he knows, from the actress Julia Roberts to the singers Joan Baez and Barbra Streisand. It shows, as well, the pressure he was under, as he became the public face of the government\u2019s response while at the same time countering what he called \u201cslanderous lies\u201d about him spread by \u201cextreme right elements in society.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Dr. Fauci is scheduled to testify under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which Mr. Paul chairs. Although Dr. Fauci received a \u201cpre-emptive pardon\u201d from former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Paul has repeatedly referred him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat he wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories,\u201d the senator wrote on the social media platform X.<\/p>\n Senator Paul\u2019s office did not respond to requests for comment about how he obtained the diary. But it is typewritten, suggesting Dr. Fauci may have taken notes on his work computer, possibly for his memoir,<\/a> published in 2024.<\/p>\n Dr. Fauci declined comment.<\/p>\n The debate over whether Covid-19 leaked from a lab, either accidentally or intentionally, has raged for years. Some Republicans fixated on it after President Trump floated the idea in the early months of the pandemic in his first term. Democrats rejected the theory, insisting that Mr. Trump was trying to blame China while distracting attention from his administration\u2019s failings in containing Covid\u2019s spread.<\/p>\n Dr. Fauci has long maintained that he is open to the idea of a lab leak, but believes the virus was natural in origin.<\/p>\n Much of the public discussion has centered on the question of whether the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Dr. Fauci led for nearly 40 years, had funded so-called \u201cgain-of-function\u201d research at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.<\/p>\n \u201cGain-of-function\u201d research<\/a>, which Dr. Fauci referred to in his diary as \u201cGOF,\u201d involves tinkering with the genetic makeup of viruses to better understand how they evolve \u2014 and to prevent against future pandemics. It is strictly regulated by the government. Dr. Fauci has repeatedly insisted that his institute did not fund such research in China, and Mr. Paul has insisted that he did.<\/p>\n \u201cIf anybody is lying here, senator, it is you,\u201d Dr. Fauci said in response to questions from Mr. Paul in July 2021.<\/p>\n At the outset of the pandemic, the public health establishment dismissed the idea of a lab leak as a \u201cconspiracy theory.\u201d Dr. Fauci wrote as much on Jan. 31, 2020: \u201cThere have been conspiracy theories that the virus was given GOF by inserted mutations and deliberately or accidentally released in Wuhan.\u201d<\/p>\n But the diary, echoing previously released emails, reflects that Dr. Fauci was uncertain.<\/p>\n When a respected scientist expressed concerns that the virus might have indeed been engineered, Dr. Fauci convened a conference call with leading virologists and evolutionary biologists who debated the idea. In the emails, Dr. Fauci had said that if their suspicions bore out, the scientists would have to alert \u201cappropriate authorities,\u201d including the F.B.I.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was not total agreement\u201d on the call, Dr. Fauci wrote in the diary. Of 11 scientists, not including Dr. Fauci, just two were convinced that the virus emerged naturally. The others were not sure. Dr. Fauci did not state his own view.<\/p>\n Mr. Paul pointed to the entry as an indication that the scientific establishment was more divided than Dr. Fauci let on. He also seized on Dr. Fauci\u2019s January 2020 \u201camplifier\u201d comment as evidence of dishonesty. But Dr. Fauci had made the same comment three weeks later in an interview with U.S.A. Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dr. Fauci, 85, who retired from government service at the end of 2022, has long maintained a public profile. He has advised seven presidents, on matters ranging from AIDS to anthrax and Ebola, and has been a familiar figure in Washington circles, showing up at events like the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner.<\/p>\n But the pandemic catapulted him into new territory, as he himself notes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable\u201d in the world, he wrote after a \u201cvery flattering\u201d front-page story in The Washington Post.<\/p>\n The entries were also full of references to Hollywood stars, some of whom seemed star-struck over him.<\/p>\n Barbra Streisand called asking for vaccine advice. When Dr. Fauci told her he listened to her music on Alexa, the virtual assistant, she confessed she didn\u2019t know what Alexa was. \u201cI accidentally butt called her later in the evening,\u201d Dr. Fauci wrote, and when he played her music over Alexa, she \u201cabsolutely loved it!\u201d<\/p>\n Joan Baez painted a portrait of him. Julia Roberts introduced him at an awards ceremony.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is so charming, natural, fun and amazingly beautiful,\u201d Dr. Fauci wrote of Ms. Roberts. \u201cWhen my image came up on the screen,\u201d he added, \u201cshe gasped and said that every time she sees me her throat gets dry and she gets nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n Senator Paul taunted Dr. Fauci on social media about the disclosures, writing that<\/a> \u201cWhile America buried loved ones, Anthony Fauci was counting headlines that doted over him.\u201d He posted what appeared to be an A.I.-generated image of Dr. Fauci<\/a>, dressed in a bright sweater and lying on a pink blanket, writing in a diary as if he were a teenage girl.<\/p>\n Mr. Paul has been investigating Covid\u2019s origins, and Dr. Fauci, for years.<\/p>\n Some government agencies, including the Department of Energy and the Central Intelligence Agency, now favor the lab leak theory. When President Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, his administration steered the Covid.gov website, used by the Biden administration to promote vaccines, to a new page<\/a> that blared the words \u201cLAB LEAK: The true origins of Covid-19.\u201d<\/p>\n