After an eight-month cyber hunt, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. found Anthony Fauci’s private diary on HHS servers. Sen. Rand Paul has released all 1,100-plus pages of it. And that Fauci diary — paired with my own memoir of the pandemic — provides some of the very best evidence for the case that makes up the title of my new book: Why Fauci MUST Rot in Prison.
The four questions I ask are the same that would be asked of any chief executive who financed a dangerous experiment overseas, learned that a catastrophe killing millions might trace back to it, and then helped construct a public story pointing anywhere but back at himself: What did Fauci know? When did he know it? What did he do next? And who died because of it?
By the book’s end, I, the prosecutor, lay out possible criminal charges that range from manslaughter by culpable negligence and conspiracy to defraud the United States to obstruction and state-law homicide theories. And you, the jury, will render the verdict.
Let’s start with the money. Tony Fauci ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for 38 years and sat atop billions of dollars in infectious-disease research funding. His institute awarded EcoHealth Alliance a grant titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
EcoHealth sent $598,611 from that grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers constructed chimeric bat coronaviruses and tested them in humanized mice in ways that did indeed make the viruses more dangerous to humans. Moreover, U.S. intelligence says Wuhan lab personnel worked with scientists associated with China’s People’s Liberation Army.
That is not conspiracy theory. It is a grant number, a subaward, and progress reports.
Running dangerous gain-of-function experiments through the Wuhan lab should have entailed extraordinary oversight. Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) inspector general found that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and EcoHealth — and by extension Fauci — failed to monitor the work.
The Department of Defense had reportedly already looked at this work and refused to fund it, flagging the gain-of-function risk its sponsors hadn’t bothered to assess. And HHS later debarred EcoHealth and its president, Peter Daszak, from federal funding for five years for hiding data and reporting inadequately.
In summary, Fauci used taxpayer money to offshore dangerous gain-of-function technology to a Wuhan lab with ties to the Chinese military. The Chinese used — and likely improved — this technology in ways that almost certainly led to the engineering and escape or release of the Covid virus in late 2019.
Fauci’s move to cover up his own likely culpability began with an alarming Jan. 31, 2020, call with scientists Jeremy Farrar and Kristian Andersen. Fauci’s diary records their concern that mutations around the furine-cleavage site “could not have occurred naturally.”
The next day came the larger call. Fauci’s diary lists a dozen scientists and senior biomedical officials who participated. Ten of the 12 argued a laboratory origin was plausible, wrote Fauci. And given Shi Zhengli’s years of coronavirus work in Wuhan — Shi is the infamous bat lady of Wuhan — Fauci recorded: “[W]e could not let this go.”
But let it go Fauci did. Within weeks, two scientists who first said the virus was from the lab, Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry, produced “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” in Nature Medicine. They argued the virus came from nature.
At the time, these two flip-floppers had an $8.9-million grant pending Fauci’s approval — and Andersen would acknowledge that the work on the “Proximal Origin” paper had been “prompted” by Fauci along with his boss and the head of HHS, Francis Collins.
I do not call this a bribe but rather an inexcusable, undisclosed conflict at the center of the century’s defining scientific question: Where did the SARS-CoV-2 virus come from?
At roughly the same time, EcoHealth President Peter Daszak co-signed a statement in The Lancet roundly condemning suggestions of a Wuhan lab origin of the virus as “conspiracy theories.” This was the same Daszak who funneled Fauci-approved grant money to the Wuhan lab to support the gain-of-function research that likely led to the virus’ engineering. Daszak didn’t disclose his obvious conflict either.
None of this proves a criminal cover-up. What it does give is motive, opportunity, relationships, chronology, and witnesses.
Because of Joe Biden’s sweeping federal pardon of Fauci, the most viable path to accountability now runs through the states, and Florida offers the strongest homicide theory. Its manslaughter statute reaches culpable negligence. Its courts have jurisdiction over any death that occurs inside the state. It has no statute of limitations on a felony that results in death. And it has a statewide prosecutor built for complex, multi-county cases. Attorney General James Uthmeier is already moving on the case.
Texas presents a narrower but potentially powerful avenue involving unborn children because Texas homicide law recognizes an unborn child as an individual from fertilization forward. Fauci failed to disclose the potential risk of miscarriage to pregnant women and instead pushed the universal jab as safe.
Louisiana offers still a third possible forum through its criminal-negligence laws. Attorney General Liz Murrill has already joined the Florida effort and is exploring options.
As for the prosecution strategy, put Daszak and the “Proximal Origin” authors under oath. Next, secure the cooperation of Fauci’s former senior adviser David Morens under his plea agreement. Morens pleaded guilty on Aug. 18 to conspiracy to commit offenses and defraud the United States in a scheme involving concealed federal records related to coronavirus research grants. He faces up to five years.
Then question Fauci’s longtime special assistant, Patricia Conrad. Public records place Conrad directly in the Jan. 31, 2020, communications setting up Fauci’s origins discussions with Jeremy Farrar and the virologists alarmed by the virus.
Paul now says his investigation uncovered a message from Fauci’s assistant saying she had “deleted a ton” of Fauci’s emails. Paul wants to know who ordered the destruction, how many records disappeared, how long the practice continued, and what subjects those records covered.
Fauci has had television interviews, congressional testimony, medals, a presidential pardon — even a bobblehead. What he has never had is the forum that settles allegations like these: a courtroom and a jury.
In my new book, Why Fauci MUST Rot in Prison, the charge will not be genocide by slogan or murder by press release. It will be built the way every durable criminal case is built: one statute, one victim, one causal chain, and one provable act at a time.
Peter Navarro is the White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing and author of "Why Fauci MUST Rot in Prison."