On at least five occasions during his final two decades in government, Dr. Anthony Fauci asked recipients of emails to delete the contents after reading them, according to newly released evidence from Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul that chronicles a culture of secrecy under America's former top doctor that extended to his dealings with U.S. spy agencies.

Fauci's contacts with the intelligence community included efforts to steer the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence's office toward scientists who were advocating that COVID-19 emerged naturally even as the FBI developed evidence that the deadly virus was man-made and may have leaked from a Chinese lab where research was funded by Fauci's agencies, the memos show.

For instance, a CIA memorandum stated 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," according to a summary of the memos released this weekend by Paul.

Likewise, a July 12, 2021, email from ODNI states that Fauci had emphasized a scientific article and identified “the authors whose views he thought were particularly important." That article was written by Anderson, Holmes and Andrew Rambaut, the scientists who advocated the natural-origins theory of COVID.

The documents also show that the CIA struck an inter-agency contract with Fauci's agency, the National Institute for Infectious Disease and Allergy, on bioterrorism research, permitting the transfer of funds between the two agencies that would be unclassified but restricted from public release.

The undated contract released by Paul was to "conduct work to support BTC [biological threat characterization] relevant forensic research needs and focus on comparative genomic analysis of organisms considered agents of bioterrorism." 

Some of that work appeared to focus on viruses that could kill humans.

For instance, one memo shows the CIA, on Sept. 4, 2015, asked Fauci's agency “for a paper outlining the rate of mutation, the number of passages from human to human to lock in these mutations (or to generate them), and the molecular genetic means through which this is likely to occur.”

You can read those documents here.

The memos released by Paul also show Fauci closed at least five sensitive emails from his government account with specific instructions to delete the conversation after it was read. The instructions appear in messages dated Sept. 26, 2009; December 19, 2011; March 4, 2012; Feb. 2, 2020; and July 20, 2020. 

"It is truly amazing how people let their own self-interest drive them to make stupid statements," Fauci wrote in one such email among rivalries between AIDS vaccine researchers and comparisons to the smallpox vaccine.

Fauci instructed the recipient, a NIAD deputy named Greg Folkers, to "please delete this email after you had read it."

In another email, about debate over a "doomsday virus," Fauci told another top deputy, Dr. Cliff Lane, "please delete this email and then delete from the deleted file."

The Federal Records Act requires government records to preserve in nearly all cases the records of their federal work, including emails,

President Barack Obama in 2016 mandated that every agency create archives of their email systems for preservation at the National Archives.

'Federal agencies must manage all email records in an electronic format. Email records must be retained in an appropriate electronic system that supports records management and litigation requirements (which may include preservation-in-place models), including the capability to identify, retrieve, and retain the records for as long as they are needed," the 2016 memo stated.

Fauci received a pardon at the end of the Biden presidency that protects him from federal prosecution for any crimes committed between 2014 and 2024, but some states said they are investigating whether to prosecute him under state laws.

On July 29, Fauci appeared before Paul's committee under subpoena and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times, refusing to answer senators' questions. The committee subsequently voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress and referred him to the DOJ for prosecution.

Fauci recently opened a legal defense fund to raise money to defray his legal expenses.

That effort comes as Dr. David Morens, a former top Fauci adviser, pleaded guilty this month to conspiracy in a scheme to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests.

The Justice Department brought the case against Morens in April, which accused the former senior scientific adviser at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases of committing conspiracy against the U.S., destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting.

The case comes after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic uncovered evidence in 2024 that Morens used his personal email, outside the scope of FOIA requests, to discuss National Institute of Health grants with the infectious disease group EcoHealth Alliance.