Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard used her final day in office to release what she described as never-before-seen documents and communications implicating Dr. Anthony Fauci in lying to Congress, manipulating intelligence community assessments on COVID-19 origins, and directing millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The document release, published through the ODNI website, represents the most direct official accusation yet that the former NIAID director used his position and his relationships inside the intelligence community to suppress the lab leak theory, and then denied it all under oath.
Gabbard did not hold back. In a public statement accompanying the release, she laid out the core allegation: Fauci worked hand-in-glove with career intelligence officials to bury the truth about the pandemic's origins, and then lied about it when Congress asked him directly.
"Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I'm releasing never before seen communications and documents that expose exactly how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the intelligence community to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus's lab leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives."
The released materials, as Breitbart reported, center on Fauci's 2024 testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. During that appearance, Fauci denied under oath that he had ever spoken to any intelligence agency about COVID-19 or participated in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.
Gabbard says the correspondence she released directly contradicts that sworn testimony.
The New York Post reported a specific detail that sharpens the contradiction: Fauci met with CIA officials on June 4, 2021, just weeks after his May 11, 2021, denial to Congress that NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The CIA, the Post noted, was already aware at the time that staff at the Wuhan lab had fallen ill in late 2019, before the pandemic spread globally.
That timeline matters. If Fauci was meeting with intelligence officials about virus-related matters within weeks of telling Congress the opposite, the gap between his public statements and his private conduct becomes harder to explain away as a misunderstanding.
Gabbard also disclosed that her office received statements from multiple intelligence community whistleblowers. Their accounts, she said, describe a pattern of professional punishment aimed at analysts who dared challenge the preferred narrative on COVID's origins.
"The correspondence I'm releasing today directly contradicts his sworn testimony, and we received statements from multiple whistleblowers revealing that the intelligence analysts who dared to challenge Dr. Fauci's COVID origin conclusions faced threats of retaliation, marginalization, and many suffered career setbacks."
The identities of those whistleblowers have not been made public. But the allegation fits a pattern that has become familiar in the post-pandemic reckoning: analysts and scientists who raised questions about the lab leak hypothesis were sidelined, while the natural-origins narrative was treated as settled science, backed, Gabbard alleges, by Fauci's personal influence over intelligence assessments.
The Washington Examiner reported that the released documents run to hundreds of pages and include evidence that Fauci provided intelligence personnel with a list of experts in June 2021, experts who had financial ties to NIAID and connections to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In other words, the very people Fauci allegedly steered investigators toward had professional and financial reasons to support his preferred conclusions.
One of the more damaging details to emerge involves the handling of a whistleblower complaint about Fauci's congressional testimony. The New York Post reported that a formal complaint alleging Fauci lied to Congress about gain-of-function research was deliberately referred not to an impartial inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, but instead to then-HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Biden political appointee.
ODNI Acting Inspector General Tamara Johnson described the substance of that complaint: "The complaint alleges Dr. Fauci provided false testimony to Congress related to the conduct of gain of function research at the National Institutes of Health, thereby misleading the American people and Congressional oversight."
Routing a complaint about a senior official's honesty to a political ally of that official, rather than to an independent inspector general, is the kind of institutional maneuvering that erodes public trust in accountability mechanisms. It suggests the Biden-era apparatus was more interested in protecting Fauci than in determining whether he told the truth.
The indictment of Fauci's former adviser David Morens for allegedly hiding COVID-origins records shows that the accountability net is widening beyond Fauci himself, though the central figure remains untouched by criminal charges so far.
Gabbard's final-day release did not come in isolation. Days earlier, she had declassified intelligence records revealing that U.S. taxpayers funded more than 120 biological research labs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine. Just The News reported that many of those labs conducted gain-of-function research on highly contagious pathogens with minimal oversight.
Gabbard tied that earlier disclosure to the Fauci allegations directly, stating that "politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration's national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth."
The declassified materials reference dangerous pathogens including anthrax, Ebola, and swine fever at these facilities. The ODNI linked the release to President Trump's Executive Order 14292, signed May 25, 2025, which terminated federal funding for gain-of-function research worldwide.
That executive order now looks less like a policy preference and more like a necessary correction after years of reckless spending on research that, Gabbard alleges, helped create the very pandemic it was supposed to prevent.
Notably absent from any reporting on the document release is a response from Dr. Fauci or his representatives. No denial, no rebuttal, no explanation for the apparent gap between his 2024 sworn testimony and the communications Gabbard says contradict it.
That silence may have a legal explanation. Sen. Rand Paul referred Fauci to the Department of Justice for prosecution for lying to Congress as far back as July 2023. Whether that referral produced any investigation remains unclear from available reporting. But the question of accountability runs into a significant obstacle: Republican senators have pressed the Trump DOJ to challenge Fauci's Biden-era pardon in court, arguing that a blanket pardon should not shield someone from consequences for lying under oath to the people's elected representatives.
Gabbard framed the stakes in broad terms, calling the pandemic a source of "tremendous hardship and pain for millions of our fellow Americans and countless people around the world." Her conclusion was blunt:
"Politicized, self-serving leaders like Dr. Fauci covered up their own wrongdoing and abuses of power, manipulated intelligence, lied to Congress, and undermined a duly elected president by restricting his access to the vital facts he needed to keep the country safe."
The Fauci saga does not exist in a vacuum. The broader pattern, senior health and science officials allegedly misleading Congress, hiding records, and using institutional power to avoid scrutiny, has produced other legal consequences in recent months. The extradition of former CDC researcher Poul Thorsen to face fraud charges after 15 years on the run is another reminder that the public health establishment's credibility problems extend well beyond one man.
But Fauci is not just any man. He became the face of the federal pandemic response, wielding authority that shaped lockdowns, school closures, vaccine mandates, and the censorship of dissenting scientific voices. If the documents Gabbard released bear out her allegations, then the official who demanded the public's trust was simultaneously working to ensure they never learned the full truth.
Gabbard is leaving her post to care for her husband, who is battling what she described as an extremely rare form of cancer. Her departure removes a DNI who made transparency on COVID origins a signature priority. Whether her successor continues that work, and whether the Justice Department acts on the evidence she left behind, will determine whether this document release amounts to a historical record or a legal reckoning.
The documents are public now. The question is whether anyone in Washington has the will to follow them where they lead, or whether the same institutional machinery that allegedly protected Fauci for years will simply grind on.
