In her final hours as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard released a batch of declassified memos revealing that an intelligence community whistleblower formally accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of lying to Congress about gain-of-function research, and that the Biden administration quietly routed the complaint away from an independent watchdog and into the hands of a political ally.
The documents, first reported by Just the News, show that then-Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines referred the complaint not to the HHS Office of Inspector General, the independent body responsible for investigating misconduct in Fauci's agency, but to then-HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Biden political appointee now running for governor of California.
The result: a whistleblower who believed Fauci's congressional testimony was "false and potentially prosecutable" saw the complaint land on the desk of a cabinet secretary with every incentive to make it disappear. And for nearly five years, the public never saw the paperwork.
The complaint arrived at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence shortly after a June 2021 meeting at CIA headquarters. A declassified summary of that meeting shows Fauci sat down with CIA officials to discuss evidence that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had fallen ill in the fall of 2019, months before the world learned about COVID-19.
Fauci raised specific questions at that meeting. The CIA summary quotes him identifying "key gaps that need to be filled," including whether the sick researchers had medical records available, whether blood cultures existed, and whether the U.S. had asked China for that information.
That meeting matters because of what Fauci told Congress afterward, and what he told Congress years later. Despite sitting across from CIA officials to discuss the lab leak evidence, Fauci continued to insist publicly that COVID-19 emerged naturally from a wet market. He also continued to deny that his office funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
An intelligence community whistleblower filed a formal complaint with ODNI, alleging Fauci's congressional testimony was false.
On August 11, 2021, Acting Intelligence Community Inspector General Tamara Johnson wrote to DNI Haines, laying out the substance of the complaint. Johnson's letter described the allegation plainly:
"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.'"
But Johnson also offered a rationale for not sending the complaint to HHS-OIG, the office with actual jurisdiction to investigate. Her reasoning was striking in its circularity:
"The general dispute about 'gain-of-function' research is already in the public domain making it highly probable that the HHS-OIG would already be aware of the allegation that the Dr. Fauci's testimony was inaccurate (albeit from a different source, not our ICWPA submitter). Consequently, we determined there would be no merit in referring the matter to HHS OIG."
Read that again. The acting inspector general's position was, in essence: the allegation is already publicly known, so there's no point in sending it to the people whose job it is to investigate it. The fact that a formal whistleblower inside the intelligence community had come forward with firsthand knowledge, a "different source" than the public debate, was treated as redundant rather than as corroboration.
Instead, Haines referred the complaint to Becerra. The New York Post reported that Haines and her top lawyer, Christopher Fonzone, coordinated to route the complaint away from independent oversight, citing that it "does not meet the urgent concern standard."
What Becerra did with the complaint, if anything, remains unknown. The declassified memos do not show any follow-up action by HHS.
The story might have ended there, buried under layers of bureaucratic process. But Gabbard's release draws a direct line between the 2021 complaint and Fauci's later testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2024.
At that hearing, Fauci was asked under oath whether he had spoken to "FBI, CIA, DIA or any U.S. intelligence agency concerning viral research" before, during, or after the pandemic. Gabbard stated that Fauci "repeatedly dodged the questions, before falsely stating, 'not to my knowledge about COVID.'"
The June 2021 CIA meeting summary, now declassified, shows Fauci doing exactly what he later denied: sitting with CIA officials and discussing virus research connected to the Wuhan lab. The gap between what the documents show and what Fauci told Congress under oath is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of record.
Fauci has repeatedly denied engaging in wrongdoing or lying to Congress. He accepted a pardon from President Joe Biden in late 2024, a pardon that, according to Just the News, was signed by autopen.
The pattern of Biden-era officials bending procedural rules to shield favored actors from accountability did not begin or end with Fauci. But the scale of what was at stake, the origins of a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans, makes this particular diversion difficult to dismiss as routine bureaucratic discretion.
Gabbard framed the document release as a final act of transparency. Her statement did not mince words:
"The tactics used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook: 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 vital facts needed to keep the country safe."
She added: "It's time the American people learn the real story."
Gabbard also stated that the released correspondence "directly contradicts Fauci's 2024 testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic." The Washington Examiner reported that the documents show Fauci used his advisory role within intelligence agencies to push a natural-origin narrative and provided investigators a list of experts biased toward that conclusion, including researchers connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology itself.
That detail, if accurate, means the nation's top pandemic official was not merely a passive participant in the intelligence community's COVID origins assessment. He was actively shaping it, while simultaneously denying to Congress that his office had funded the very research under scrutiny.
Fox News reported that the declassified files also reveal U.S. government funding for more than 120 foreign biolabs in over 30 countries conducting gain-of-function research with minimal oversight. Intelligence officials had previously rejected Fauci as an outside reviewer of their COVID-19 origins assessment due to conflict-of-interest concerns, a fact that undercuts any claim that Fauci's involvement in the process was neutral or disinterested.
A CIA whistleblower had separately alleged a coordinated cover-up surrounding COVID-19 origins. Gabbard's document release amplifies those earlier claims with contemporaneous paperwork.
The question of how institutions treat whistleblowers who report misconduct is not abstract. In this case, the whistleblower's complaint was acknowledged, summarized, and then sent to a political appointee with no apparent follow-through. The system designed to protect people who report wrongdoing functioned instead as a routing mechanism to ensure the complaint reached someone unlikely to act on it.
Republican Senators Rand Paul and Ron Johnson told Just the News this week that they believe the Trump Department of Justice should challenge the legality of Fauci's autopen-signed pardon and pursue prosecution.
Newsmax reported that Paul announced a COVID-19 whistleblower would testify before his Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Paul warned that the five-year statute of limitations had passed on allegations that Fauci lied to Congress in 2021 about NIH funding of gain-of-function research. He framed the stakes bluntly: without action, Fauci "walks away from one of the biggest cover-ups in American history without ever facing a jury."
There is also a related legal thread. Fauci's former top adviser, David Morens, was charged by the DOJ on April 28 with conspiracy and multiple counts related to destruction and concealment of federal records tied to COVID-19 research. The charges against Morens suggest that the evidentiary trail around Fauci's office is not as cold as the statute of limitations might imply.
Whether the autopen pardon can withstand legal challenge is an open question. But the fact that Fauci accepted a pardon at all, after years of insisting he did nothing wrong, is a data point that speaks for itself.
The broader pattern of fraud referrals and DOJ investigations into Democratic officials suggests the current administration has no intention of letting procedural roadblocks serve as permanent shields for political figures accused of misconduct.
The declassified memos raise as many questions as they answer. The identity of the intelligence community whistleblower remains unknown. The exact congressional testimony alleged to be false, and its precise date, are not specified in the released documents. Whether Becerra took any action after receiving the referral is unaddressed.
Fauci has not responded specifically to the documents Gabbard released. His blanket denial of wrongdoing remains on the record, but the documentary evidence now available to the public makes that denial harder to sustain.
The accountability failures that allowed Democratic officials to evade scrutiny during the Biden years are becoming clearer with each document release. In this case, a whistleblower came forward through proper channels, filed a complaint under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, and watched the system redirect that complaint to the one person least likely to act on it.
That is not oversight. It is insulation. And the American public, the people who buried loved ones, lost businesses, pulled children out of school, and were told to trust the science, deserved better than a complaint routed to a political appointee's desk and left to gather dust.
