Dr Fauci Is Back In The News

Over the weekend, Sen Rand Paul's office released a big deposit of documents obtained via subpoena from Dr Fauci, the NIH, and various other individuals. The most prominent is a digital diary that Fauci kept, apparently on agency computer resources, an incredibly dumb move on Fauci's part. So far, the stories haven't made it absolutely plain that Fauci kept the diary on NIH computers -- which made it public property and thus easily accessible -- but it's hard to avoid thinking this was the case.

On July 24, Senator Rand Paul's committee published two documents that have not been reported in any depth.

The first is Fauci's personal diary, 1,141 pages, running from late 2019 through his retirement in December 2022. It is partly a journal and overwhelmingly a scrapbook: he pasted hundreds of articles about himself into it, frequently in full.

The second is 136 pages of internal email about his awards - nominations, ethics clearances, and the disposition of prize money.

The most detailed take on the diary is by Miranda Devine at the New York Post:

Fauci emerges from the diary entries as a frivolous narcissist, possibly corrupt and a really bad speller (for example, “dyswaded” for dissuaded).

As a onetime writing instructor, I found the spelling errors fascinating, for instance:

“Big front page article abut [sic] me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering,” he wrote on May 21, 2020, noting global deaths of 9,800, with 272 deaths in the US.

“It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson [sic] in the world . . . The entire secret service corps is coming over to me and chatting. They let me into the first gate without even checking ID.”

Everybody makes typos, and they can be hard to catch (ask me how I know), but rampant misspellings are just a sign of carelessness. And shouldn't doctors and public health officials cultivate habits of care? But another big issue that nobody has specifically pointed out is how Fauci spent his, and apparently his subordinates', time. The diary alone is 1,141 pages over three years, including hundreds of media articles pasted into it. How much time per day did he spend on it? Then there was his time, and staff time, spent soliciting and collecting awards:

By June 2022, he was officially a legend: “It has been an extraordinary spring with all of these wonderful honors that I have received. This will have been my 58th honorary doctorate.”

. . . Additional files released by Paul in the prelude to Wednesday’s showdown reveal that Fauci, who had been the highest-paid federal official in the US government, also solicited nominations for big-money awards for himself from scientists to whom he had given millions in government grants, according to the files.

He “stacked up cash prizes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars during COVID,” said Paul, including one foreign prize worth a cool $900,000.

Fauci even had his taxpayer-funded staff writing nominations for him.

As of February 15, 2021,

America's top infectious disease official Dr. Anthony Fauci received a prestigious $1 million Israeli prize Monday, along with six other researchers who shared two additional $1 million prizes for their contributions to health and medicine.

The Dan David Prize, affiliated with Tel Aviv University, said it honored Fauci for his career in public health and "speaking truth to power" during the politicized COVID-19 crisis.

Fauci "is the consummate model of leadership and impact in public health," the awards committee said in a statement.

Fauci has in fact continued to do very well financially since his retirement:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former White House Chief Medical Adviser and a prominent figure during the COVID-19 pandemic, has seen a significant increase in his wealth since retiring from government service, according to the government watchdog group Open the Books.

"He was the highest-paid bureaucrat when he was working for the federal government, he was making $480,000 as his final salary. He’s actually doing even better post-retirement," said Rachel O’Brien, Public Policy Editor at Open the Books.

Open the Books obtained Fauci’s financial disclosure, revealing that his household earned more than $3.5 million in 2023. This included multiple six-figure deposits, though the sources of these deposits were not detailed in the documents. Fauci reportedly had several paid speaking engagements and sold his memoir to a subsidiary of Penguin Random House for approximately $5 million.

. . . Additionally, Fauci's government security detail, which cost approximately $15 million since he retired from government life, was canceled by President Trump shortly after taking office.

Quick research on the web indicates there's been little serious attemtion to the total amounts and sources of the financial awards the guy has received, which must certainly total in the multimillions. Maybe this renewed attention will change this.