Newly Released Fauci Memos: “Delete This Email” and a Push to Steer Intel Toward a Natural COVID Origin

Senate Homeland Security Chairman Rand Paul released additional records over the weekend showing Dr. Anthony Fauci, on at least five occasions spanning 2009 to 2020, telling federal colleagues to delete emails after reading them. The same package describes Fauci pointing CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence officers to scientists who publicly argued COVID-19 had features consistent with a natural origin while the FBI was developing a lab-leak case. The documents were entered into the record around the July 29 hearing at which Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times and was later held in contempt. The Federal Records Act requires agencies to preserve official records, including email. In 2024 House testimony Fauci said he had not deleted official records and had not tried to obstruct FOIA. President Biden issued him a pardon covering conduct back to 2014 before leaving office in January 2025.

Paul’s committee listed deletion instructions dated Sept. 26, 2009; Dec. 19, 2011; March 4, 2012; Feb. 2, 2020; and July 20, 2020. On Feb. 2, 2020 — the day after the conference call that led to the “Proximal Origin” paper — Fauci wrote NIH Director Francis Collins: “Please delete this e-mail after you read it.” The thread involved Jeremy Farrar and discussion of getting ahead of the origins narrative. On July 20, 2020, after a Rand Paul tweet comparing New York’s COVID death rate with other places, Fauci forwarded the item to Chief of Staff Greg Folkers, wrote that he did not want to “engage any more with this nonsense,” and added, “please delete this e-mail after you read it.” A 2012 NIH-account message to deputy Cliff Lane, amid debate over publishing methods from Ron Fouchier’s avian-flu gain-of-function work and a “doomsday virus” warning in the press, said: “Please delete this e-mail and then delete from the deleted file.” Another Folkers message about AIDS-vaccine rivalries closed with “please delete this email after you had read it.” Paul’s office said an assistant reported deleting large volumes of email. Fauci’s 2024 answers to Reps. James Comer, Debbie Lesko, and Nicole Malliotakis were that he had not deleted official records or Wuhan-related emails.

A CIA memorandum summarized in the release states that Fauci urged the agency to contact Robert Garry, Kristian Andersen, and Eddie Holmes, “all three of whom have advocated for features of the virus that they judge to be consistent with a natural origin.” Those three were among the “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” authors. Committee materials say that outreach occurred as FBI investigators pursued a research-related origin. CIA career officer James Erdman told the committee in May that Fauci was involved in steering the intelligence community’s 2021 origins assessment. Paul’s August 29 package also states that CIA transferred funds to NIAID for work shielded from public release and that in 2015 CIA asked about MERS-CoV mutation frequency and human-passage risk. CIA in 2025 assessed with low confidence that a research-related origin was more likely than natural; FBI had assessed lab origin with moderate confidence. The records do not, by themselves, adjudicate the scientific origin question. They document deletion instructions from a government account, Fauci’s referrals of natural-origin authors to intelligence officers, and a prior contractual link between CIA and NIAID. Paul has referred Fauci to the Justice Department over congressional testimony. The pardon remains in force.