Private text messages show Dr. Anthony Fauci speculated in January 2021 that the second COVID vaccine dose could trigger first-trimester miscarriages, a concern he never shared publicly with pregnant women.
Republican Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul released the texts this week as part of their ongoing investigation into Fauci's conduct during the pandemic. The messages, dated January 25 and 26, 2021, show Fauci exchanging concerns with former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy about vaccine risks to pregnant women, at the very moment COVID shots were first becoming available to the public.
In one message, Fauci wrote that because many people experience a significant "cytokines storm and fever" after the second dose, it "theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester." He added that "animal tox studies did not raise any red flags" but that "[with regard to] pregnant women one must weigh the potential risks against the benefits." Just one week later, on February 3, 2021, Fauci publicly stated there were "no red flags" about the vaccine and pregnant women, the Washington Examiner reported.
That gap, between what Fauci said privately and what he told the country, is now at the center of a widening political and legal reckoning.
The text chain reveals that Murthy flagged a World Health Organization advisory "against pregnant women taking the [Moderna] vaccine bc [because] of lack of data." He asked Fauci and Walensky for their take, noting the advisory had triggered "a flurry of questions" and predicting "we will all get asked about this."
Murthy described the WHO position as a "strong [one] to make" and "potentially quite damaging to public confidence among pregnant women." Yet the three officials' private alarm never translated into a public warning. Pregnant women across the country were told the shots were safe, and many faced professional consequences if they refused.
The texts came from Fauci's government-issued cellphone, which Senate investigators obtained from HHS as part of their probe. The phone contained more than 34,000 text messages and 522 voicemails, but only three saved contacts, a detail that has raised questions among investigators about whether data may have been deleted.
Johnson and Paul released only the first batch of 11 messages. Johnson said his investigation "has only just begun," and he has requested transcribed interviews with Fauci and senior FDA officials. He alleges those officials ignored warnings that the agency's vaccine safety monitoring system was failing to detect potential safety signals.
A press release from Johnson's office said the text chain "could have an immediate impact on public health and the principle of informed consent," Breitbart reported.
The release of the texts opened a wound that has not healed for many American families. Within hours, women and their loved ones flooded social media with accounts of miscarriages they believe may be connected to the COVID vaccine, stories they say they were dismissed or silenced for raising at the time.
Meghan McCain, who has three children with journalist Ben Domenech, posted on X:
"Put Fauci in jail! I am a woman who was pregnant and had a miscarriage during COVID."
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman revealed that he and his wife, Neri Oxman, lost seven pregnancies while trying to have a second child during the pandemic. Ackman wrote: "Neri (and I) had seven miscarriages trying to have a second child during Covid and then the time ran out. WTF was he thinking?"
Lindsey Brown, a news anchor for KSTP in Minnesota, shared a more measured but no less pointed account. Brown, who had already suffered two miscarriages before the pandemic, said she took the COVID vaccine while pregnant under "enormous pressure" but ultimately skipped the second dose:
"I was terrified and skipped dose two while pregnant. I trusted my gut. By the grace of God, Oliver was born healthy."
Brown was careful to add that the texts do not prove the vaccine caused miscarriages. But she argued the distinction misses the point:
"This does NOT prove the vaccine caused miscarriages. That's not my point. COVID became political, but this shouldn't be. Pregnant women deserved to know the uncertainties experts discussed privately. You can support vaccines and demand transparency."
She said she hoped the text messages would receive "the same scrutiny given to people who questioned the vaccines at the time." During the pandemic, Americans who raised safety concerns about the shots were routinely labeled anti-vaxxers, censored on social media, and in some cases fired from their jobs.
Several of the accounts that surfaced after the texts' release came from families in healthcare, people who faced vaccine mandates as a condition of employment and say they had no real choice.
Dan Karpuc wrote that his wife "had a miscarriage after taking the required shots to keep her job/any job in healthcare." He added a bitter personal detail: both he and his wife graduated from Fauci's alma mater, Holy Cross, which recently renamed a campus building the "Anthony S Fauci Integrated Sciences Complex." His one-word verdict: "Disgusted."
A social media user identified as "Roxy" wrote: "I miscarried at 12 weeks just 5 days after a booster. Booster was taken after NP [nurse practitioner] stated she would be more worried about me as a mother if I declined it." Another parent wrote that her daughter "took the first two shots to keep her job" and then suffered two first-trimester miscarriages, one in 2023 and another in 2024, before finally delivering a healthy baby in 2025.
One account was rawer still. "My daughter, who was forced to get the va [vaccine] because of her job, lost her second baby at 15 weeks," a user wrote. "I had a hunch this was the reason. Words fail me right now. I am sick to my stomach."
Journalist Peter J. Hasson said his then-pregnant wife had been told by her doctor and her medical school professors that it was "totally reasonable to not get the vaccine" after she had already contracted COVID and developed antibodies. Despite that medical advice, Hasson said his wife struggled to find clinical rotations because of her unvaccinated status. "And so now, to see Fauci had the same concerns she did? Infuriating," he wrote.
None of these individual accounts constitute proof that the vaccine caused any specific miscarriage. They are personal testimonies, but they share a common thread: women who trusted the public health establishment's assurances, or who were coerced by workplace mandates, now feel they were denied information that top officials possessed and chose not to share.
The text messages land amid an accelerating series of legal and congressional actions against Fauci. In a recent Senate hearing, Fauci was compelled to testify and invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times under questioning from senators. Paul's committee subsequently found him in contempt of Congress, and Paul referred the contempt vote to the Department of Justice. Paul also released Fauci's personal diaries, which have added further scrutiny to his conduct during the pandemic.
Beyond Capitol Hill, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is actively investigating potential perjury charges against Fauci. Murrill told Just The News that she is examining whether Fauci lied under oath, citing contradictions between his private communications and his deposition testimony.
"We're looking at, I'm looking at what Fauci did in the context of our litigation to see whether he lied and whether there are potentially perjury charges that could arise from that."
Murrill added: "I think the public needs to hear the truth and we need people to be able to question the science without threat of retaliation from the government." A separate state-level investigation in Florida has also been launched in the wake of Fauci's Fifth Amendment invocations.
The CDC, for its part, still maintains as of February 2026 that "COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy has not been linked to increased health risks for pregnant women or babies" and that the vaccine "helps reduce the risk for severe illness from COVID-19." The Daily Mail reached out to Fauci's attorney for comment.
The core issue raised by these texts is not whether the COVID vaccine definitively causes miscarriages. That question remains unresolved, and the CDC's official position has not changed. The issue is transparency, and the systematic failure to provide it.
Fauci, Walensky, and Murthy privately discussed a theoretical risk to pregnant women in the first trimester. They privately noted a WHO advisory cautioning against the Moderna vaccine for pregnant women due to lack of data. They privately acknowledged the potential for damage to public confidence. And then, by all available evidence, they said none of it publicly. One week after the texts, Fauci told the country there were "no red flags."
Pregnant women were not given the information these officials had. They were given reassurance. Many were given mandates. Some lost pregnancies they will never stop wondering about.
Informed consent is not a slogan. It is the bedrock of medical ethics. And it requires that the people making public health recommendations share what they actually know, not just what they think the public can handle.