Fauci's aide put it in writing – she destroyed tons of his government emails in a single weekend.
Rand Paul pulled that email from Fauci's own government logs – and it was not even the worst part.
What else Paul found in those logs is the reason the emails needed to disappear.
Democrats Block Testimony on Fauci Deleted Emails and Federal Records Destruction
The Senate Homeland Security Committee tried this week to grant prosecutorial immunity to Fauci's longtime special assistant so she could testify about what she destroyed and who told her to do it.
Democrats killed it on a straight 8-7 vote.
That woman worked alongside Anthony Fauci from 2007 until his last day at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 2022.
When Paul's committee brought her in for questioning, she showed up with lawyers and pleaded the Fifth Amendment.
The email she sent Fauci was found sitting right there in logs he kept on a government computer.
"Hey, Dr. Fauci, I was able to destroy tons of your emails this weekend," she allegedly wrote to her boss.
Federal law does not allow that.
Under the Federal Records Act and a 2016 Obama administration mandate, every government email tied to official business must be preserved and archived at the National Archives.
Destroying them is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1519 – a statute that carries up to 20 years in federal prison and can bar violators from ever holding federal office again.
Paul wants to know two things: how many years this went on, and who gave her the order.
"We presume Anthony Fauci," Paul told Just the News.
Prosecuting the aide was never the goal – the committee wanted to flip her, offering immunity in exchange for testimony against whoever issued the illegal orders.
Biden's pardon, issued in his final days in office, shields Fauci from federal prosecution for any crimes committed between 2014 and 2024.
But Paul is not finished.
If his committee does not get cooperation within two weeks, he plans to refer the aide directly to the Department of Justice – which does not need a committee vote to offer immunity on its own.
Tom Cotton Is Blocking the Classified Gain-of-Function Files Tied to Fauci and the Wuhan Lab
Paul's investigation has now turned up something larger than deleted emails.
His committee found communications pointing to gain-of-function programs that no one outside Fauci's circle knew existed – not programs that had ever been debated or disputed in public, but programs that did not appear anywhere in the public record until Paul's team pulled them from Fauci's logs.
"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 said.
Paul's assessment is that most of the government's gain-of-function research has been running under a classified bioweapons or biodefense label – meaning no congressional oversight committee reviewed it, and no independent scientists ever assessed whether it posed a risk to the public.
The Daily Caller first reported that Fauci's NIAID entered a secret agreement with the CIA going back to the early 2000s, covering what the document calls "forensic microbiology" on bioterrorism pathogens.
That classified agreement put the relevant research under the jurisdiction of the Senate Intelligence Committee – Tom Cotton's committee.
Cotton has written directly to the Director of National Intelligence instructing him not to share classified gain-of-function documents with Paul's committee – and under the current arrangement, Cotton gets the final say over what gets released and what stays buried.
"There's an internal fight in Congress," Paul said, naming Cotton directly.
Paul is demanding independent scientists – people with actual virology credentials and no financial stake in the outcome – review classified gain-of-function programs, something that has never been done.
Paul said the default rationale behind classified gain-of-function work – that China is doing it so America must too – is no way to run a biodefense program.
A 2024 Pentagon Inspector General report found that military officials could not calculate how much U.S. funding had flowed to foreign laboratories for gain-of-function work – because the Pentagon had never tracked it, established oversight for it, or commissioned any independent review of what the money was paying for.
The aide is still pleading the Fifth, the proof of destruction is still sitting in Fauci's own government logs, and Paul says the most explosive revelations have not arrived yet.
Sources:
- John Solomon, "Rand Paul drops Fauci bombshell, says more record destruction and gain-of-function research found," Just the News, September 23, 2026.
- Kyle Becker, "Rand Paul Drops Bombshell: Fauci Emails Discuss 'Gain-Of-Function Programs We Didn't Know Existed,'" RedState, September 23, 2026.
- Emily Kopp, "Tom Cotton Is Concealing Classified Gain-Of-Function Docs, Rand Paul Says," Daily Caller, September 24, 2026.
