In June 2021, CIA officers briefed Anthony Fauci on secret Chinese military experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
That classified briefing stayed buried for five years – until Rand Paul released Fauci's diary.
What Fauci wrote next is the reason he showed up to Congress and said nothing.
CIA Had Lab Leak Intelligence on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Fauci Called It Worthless
Senator Rand Paul subpoenaed and released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci's personal diary entries spanning December 2019 through 2022 – the full span of his tenure managing America's COVID response.
The diary entries document a June 4, 2021 meeting at NIH inside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.
CIA officer Camille Hartman briefed Fauci on signals intercepts confirming that Chinese researchers had transferred pangolin coronaviruses from Beijing to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Those viruses were being tested in transgenic mice – genetically modified animals whose biology accelerates viral adaptation to humans.
The CIA also informed Fauci that unknown experiments had been conducted at the Wuhan lab in direct cooperation with the Chinese military.
Fauci's reaction was not alarm.
He called the CIA briefers "naive" and the briefing "extremely strange," dismissed the session as "catastrophic," and wrote that it was driven by "amateurs" with no appreciation for virology.
At one point the questioning made him so uncomfortable that he wrote he wondered whether he should have a lawyer present.
"There is something very fishy about all of this," Fauci noted in his diary.
What was fishy wasn't the CIA briefing.
The same day Fauci was privately dismissing intelligence about Wuhan's pangolin experiments, his own hand-picked virologist Kristian Andersen was texting colleagues: "Do we know about WIV working in pangolin CoVs in the lab? If so, that's huge."
Andersen thought it was huge and said so privately.
Fauci spent the next two years making sure the American public never found out.
Three days after the CIA briefing, Fauci met with National Security Council Senior Director Beth Cameron and urged her to bring in his inner circle of "card carrying virologists" – the same tight group he had privately coordinated public messaging with since February 2020.
That coordination shaped everything the American people heard about where COVID came from.
Rand Paul Used the Fauci Diaries to Expose a Five-Year COVID-19 Cover-Up
Fauci appeared before Paul's Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee under congressional subpoena.
He opened with a statement calling Paul's pursuit of him an "unhinged obsession."
Then he pleaded the Fifth Amendment over 100 times.
Not once did he answer a question about pandemic origins, the CIA briefings, the Wuhan lab funding, or the gap between what his diary reveals he knew privately and what he told America publicly.
Paul was ready for it.
"We believe that with his immunity from criminal liability, that he didn't need to hide behind the Fifth Amendment," Paul told reporters after the hearing, "and that maybe the Fifth Amendment doesn't attach when you have a pardon in place."
Biden pardoned Fauci in the final hours of his administration, covering any offenses tied to his government work from 2014 through January 19, 2025.
A pardon eliminates prosecution risk – and prosecution risk is the only legal basis for invoking the Fifth Amendment.
Fauci's attorney tried to interject during the hearing to defend his client.
Paul had him ejected from the room.
Next week, Paul's committee votes on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.
If that referral reaches the Trump DOJ, Fauci faces prosecution not for what he did during COVID – Biden's pardon covers that – but for what he refused to say under oath yesterday.
Biden built that pardon to protect Fauci from the Trump administration – and handed Paul the one legal instrument that strips Fauci's Fifth Amendment shield entirely.
For five years, Fauci told America the virus came from a wet market, dismissed the lab leak as a fringe theory, and publicly ridiculed the scientists and senators who disagreed.
His own diary proves he knew better in June 2021.
The CIA brought him proof of Chinese military experiments, undisclosed pangolin virus transfers, and intercepts from inside Wuhan – and Fauci called them amateurs.
Yesterday, sitting under subpoena with that diary in front of him, he had nothing to say.
Sources:
- Emily Kopp, "Fauci Quietly Fumed As CIA Briefed Him On Explosive Wuhan Lab Intel, Diary Reveals," The Daily Caller, July 29, 2026.
- "CIA Obtained Secret Information About Wuhan Lab, Fauci Diary Shows," The Epoch Times, July 28, 2026.
- Matt Vespa, "So, That's Why Fauci Pled the Fifth, Despite a Blanket Pardon From Biden," Townhall, July 29, 2026.
- "Sen. Rand Paul Questions Whether Fauci's Invoking the Fifth Amendment Was Valid After Biden Pardon," Fox News, July 29, 2026.
- "Anthony Fauci Faces Contempt Vote Amid Pardon, Pleading Fifth Amendment," The Hill, July 29, 2026.
