Anthony Fauci's personal diary entries, released by Sen. Rand Paul ahead of Senate testimony, show the former public health chief turned to Barack Obama for a coordinated damage-control campaign against his critics.
The diary, posted by Paul's Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, includes a November 4, 2021, entry in which Fauci describes a phone call with Obama arranged through an intermediary named Leslie Dach. Fauci wrote that Dach "had contacted Barack Obama to ask him to give me a call to see what he could do to counter the slanderous lies there have been coming from the far right press, extreme right elements in society, and even several members of the Senate and the House." Obama, Breitbart News reported, did more than offer sympathy. He offered to mobilize the Biden administration itself on Fauci's behalf.
That a former president would personally intervene to orchestrate a public-relations campaign for a sitting government bureaucrat, using active White House officials as instruments, tells you everything about how Washington's permanent class protects its own.
Fauci's diary entry describes Obama expressing concern that Fauci, as a "civilian," should not have to endure public criticism. Obama told Fauci he would call Jeff Zients and tell him "to mobilize some of the people in the administration to proactively go out and defend me," Fauci wrote. Obama also offered to reach out to Ron Klain. Both men held senior roles in the Biden White House at the time.
The former president went further, according to the diary. Obama was "very upset that none of the moderate Republicans were actually speaking out on my behalf and were distancing themselves from all of this terrible slanderous behavior against me," Fauci recorded. Obama "offered to help in any way that he can."
Days later, Fauci wrote that he had a phone call with Eric Schultz, arranged "at the request of Barack Obama." Fauci expressed gratitude: "I am very thankful to Barack Obama for helping to set up this meeting with Eric." The diary does not specify Schultz's role, but the entry makes clear Obama was the one pulling strings behind the scenes.
None of this was disclosed publicly at the time. Taxpayers funded Fauci's salary. They had no idea a former president was quietly working the phones to shield him from accountability.
During the same November 2021 phone call, Fauci recorded Obama making blunt personal attacks on former President Donald Trump and his son. Fauci wrote that he told Obama about Donald Trump Jr.'s website selling merchandise that read "Fauci kills puppies." Obama's response, as Fauci recorded it:
"Obama said that Donald Trump junior is 'A f***ing moron.' He apologized for using crude language but then went on to say that Donald Trump was a hopeless idiot who was a pathologic liar."
These are Fauci's own words, written in his own diary. They represent his account of what Obama said, not an independently verified transcript. But they come from a document released under the authority of a Senate committee chairman, and Fauci will have the opportunity to confirm or deny their accuracy under oath.
Obama's willingness to use that kind of language in a private call with a government official, while simultaneously presenting himself publicly as a statesman above partisan rancor, illustrates the gap between the former president's public image and his private conduct as recorded by someone who considered him an ally.
The diary entries make clear that the catalyst for Fauci's outreach to Obama was the growing scandal over NIAID-funded beagle experimentation studies. The White Coat Waste Project, a taxpayer watchdog group, had brought public attention to what it described as horrific animal experiments conducted under Fauci's leadership. The fallout was severe enough that the Washington Post called it "the biggest firestorm yet for Fauci," according to a statement from the group.
Fauci's diary describes the personal toll in vivid terms. He wrote that he was receiving "dozens of calls on my cell phone using FaceTime from numbers that I do not recognize which are clearly people who now have my cell phone number for harassing me about the Beagle study."
He also wrote that "it is so very clear now that this is a concerted effort to discredit me and assassinate my character. We have counted the attacks regarding the Beagle dog experiments, but still the attacks continue falsely claiming that NIAID funded the studies."
Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President of the White Coat Waste Project, responded directly to the diary revelations:
"From the moment we exposed Beaglegate, the Washington establishment, bureaucrats, politicians and the corporate media, circled the wagons to defend Fauci over his funding of deadly dog labs. Now, Fauci's own diary reveals that former President Barack Obama personally helped him coordinate a covert damage-control campaign to discredit White Coat Waste after we ignited what the Washington Post called 'the biggest firestorm yet for Fauci.'"
Goodman's characterization, "covert damage-control campaign", is strong language. But the diary entries support the core claim: Fauci reached out to a former president, who then offered to activate sitting White House officials to defend him. That is not a casual favor between friends. It is a coordinated political operation run through unofficial channels.
Other diary entries released by Paul's committee paint a picture of a bureaucrat who had become deeply invested in his own public profile. Fauci reportedly described his fame during the pandemic as "explosive and really unimaginable." For a man who held an unelected government post, the language is striking.
That self-regard may explain why Fauci treated negative press coverage not as ordinary democratic accountability but as a crisis requiring intervention from the most powerful political figures in the country. Most government officials endure criticism as part of the job. Fauci, by his own account, treated it as an emergency worthy of a former president's personal attention.
The pattern fits a broader record. Fauci made public statements as late as April 2022 about the purpose of lockdowns, telling the public, "You use lockdowns to get people vaccinated so that when you open up, you won't have a surge of infections." That framing, lockdowns as a tool to drive vaccination compliance, drew sharp criticism from those who argued public health officials had not been transparent about their objectives.
The coordinated effort to shield officials from scrutiny during the pandemic era was not limited to Fauci. The same instinct, protect the narrative, discredit the critics, keep the public in the dark, surfaced in episodes like the coordinated intelligence community letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election. When Washington's permanent class feels threatened, the playbook is consistent: mobilize allies, suppress dissent, and label critics as extremists.
Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, released the diary entries ahead of Fauci's scheduled testimony before the panel. The full diary package was posted on Paul's official Senate website.
The timing is deliberate. By making the diary public before Fauci takes the oath, Paul ensures that senators, and the public, can measure Fauci's testimony against his own private admissions. If Fauci's sworn statements contradict what he wrote in his diary, the record will be clear.
Several questions remain unanswered. Did Obama follow through on his offer to contact Klain and Zients? Did the Biden White House actually deploy personnel to defend Fauci as Obama suggested? What role did Eric Schultz play after his call with Fauci? And how many other diary entries describe similar coordination between Fauci and political figures?
The diary entries have not been independently authenticated beyond their release by Paul's committee. Fauci's testimony will offer the first opportunity for him to address their contents under penalty of perjury.
The political class that spent years lecturing Americans about "following the science" was, behind closed doors, running a political protection racket for the man who claimed to be the science. The same crowd that polices everyone else's language had a former president on the phone calling his political opponents crude names and offering to weaponize the White House communications apparatus on behalf of a single unelected official.
Fauci wanted the public to trust him. His diary shows he trusted only power.