The Fauci diaries are a predictable bust
Rand Paul desperately applies selective disclosure methods in his latest attempt to sustain lab leak fan fiction for personal gain
The lab leak zombie theory is having another forced revival in 2026 with political operatives trying to once again use the power and appeal of this compelling narrative for political gain.
On June 18th 2026, on her last way out the door, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a set of classified communications which she falsely claimed would implicate former NIAID head and pandemic advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci in the origins of COVID-19 and subsequent cover-up conspiracy. The only problem? The released documents do not support her false assertions, instead, a careful reading clearly offers snippets into a reality that very much exonerates, rather than implicates, Dr. Fauci. But who has the time to go beyond the headlines and the political spin to actually check thousands of heavily redacted pages, right?
In what Georgetown University Professor Renee DiResta accurately described as “declassification theater” , the point of these stunts is not to offer the public transparency, or lo and behold, actual evidence of the allegation, but to provide news-baity spectacle with the allure of secret documents to reach virality.
Public perception in an information-overabundant social media environment is increasingly shaped by politicians abusing their powers and positions to manufacture pseudoevents that feed into existing narratives that are already widely believed, and that support community belonging.
Using what is sometimes called “selective disclosure” methods in disinformation and propaganda research, US politicians can abuse their congressional subpoena power, access to classified intelligence, and testimony of client propagandists to leverage an asymmetric information advantage. They decontextualize, cherry-pick and frame often real information in manipulative ways that serve their goals and that a fair, contextual reading of the information would not support.
With the veneer of “releasing secret documents or assessments”, and the press’ close relationship to the powerful, widespread mainstream news coverage is almost guaranteed, and the momentum of news coverage is usually amplified by partisan media engagements, public commentary, and a cottage industry of conspiracy myth entrepreneurs and professional opinion-havers riding the news cycle.
For the lab leak narrative, we have seen these selective disclosure methods many times before, and most of the time, it would cause a flurry of subsequent media coverage.
Since selective disclosure usually works with decontextualized true information, fast and effective refutations remain difficult because the information disclosed is usually not fabricated or false, just incomplete and distorted.
By the time fact checkers or citizens gain access to the full contextual information and perform a fair reading or analysis of the document dump, usually the news cycle has moved on, correction does not find any traction, and the manipulative framing continues to linger in the public’s memory.
That’s why selective disclosure has become a favorite of anti-reality politicians and other manipulators to shape public perception in recent years.
So the question journalists and citizens should ask when confronted with “selective disclosures” is not what is contained in them, but what the discloser is trying to achieve, and why it is happening now?
And this brings me to this week’s news:
The selective disclosure of Dr. Fauci’s diaries
Senator Rand Paul, who has been positioning himself as a main antagonist to Dr. Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been on a years-long, conspiracy myth and libertarian ideology-driven crusade against the former presidential advisor.
Opposed to mask mandates, lockdowns and perceived governmental health agency overreaches, Rand found a popular target for his ire, and the heated exchanges with Dr. Fauci worked well for his popularity with the MAGA base as well as fundraising efforts.
I am not an investigative or political reporter, but here is what we know from others about how lucrative Sen. Paul’s “Get Fauci” efforts have been:
Paul’s reelection website had a section called “Fire Dr. Fauci.” with contribution buttons ranging from $5 to $100. This money flowed directly into his campaign. The overall fundraising surge was massive and coincided with the Fauci feud. In 2021—the peak year of their clashes—Paul’s reelection campaign raised $14 million total and had $8 million cash on hand by year-end. That included $3.8 million in Q4 2021 alone and over 250,000 donations for the full year.
“By comparison, during the same period in his prior term as senator (Jan. 1, 2017 through Sept. 30, 2018) the committee had raised just $320,000” - Kentucky Lantern reporting
In 2022, the Washington Post analyzed weekly fundraising tallies for three Paul-affiliated political committees and found they correlated with his Fauci attacks.
Post-2022, the money apparently kept flowing. After easily winning reelection in November 2022, Paul’s committee had more than $5 million left over. Since then, it has raised roughly another $7 million (as of late 2024), with reportedly about 57% coming from small donations of $200 or less.
It seems this kind of grassroots giving is what those viral Fauci attacks are designed to generate.
So politically and financially incentivized over the years, it appears to me that Rand Paul increasingly became radicalized and deeply captured by conspiratorial narratives that place Dr. Fauci at the center of a planetary cover-up conspiracy surrounding SARS-CoV-2 via gain of function research. Unfortunately for Paul, scientific evidence can completely refute any gain-of-function origin of SARS-CoV-2, and thereby Fauci’s, NIH’s or any other scientist’s alleged involvement.
Nevertheless, Senator Paul has repeatedly doubled down on his assertions against Dr. Fauci, from unsubstantiated claims of Fauci funding gain-of-function research (not according to legal but contested definitions and NIH judgement) to asserting he lied, perjured himself, belongs in prison for not only being involved in the supposed creation of SARS-CoV-2 to orchestrating a “deep state” cover-up. How much of it is convenient following of the conspiratorial base, and how much does he himself believe is hard to detangle.
In any case, within this larger context, Senator Paul has this week started to selectively disclose his analysis of Dr. Fauci’s diaries; under the expected “secret documents” grant fanfare with partisan outlets and commentators on X amplifying the propaganda to an audience of millions. Senator Paul is set to gain another fundraising windfall from all this attention.
The timing is no surprise either; this Wednesday, Dr. Fauci is scheduled to testify under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security Committee that Paul now chairs.
Now above, I mentioned that focusing on what the dump claims to have unearthed, rather than who it benefits and why it is happening now, is an error because it amplifies the selective information and manipulative framing of the discloser.
However, given the specific nature of this selected release, I happen to have pretty good contextual knowledge of the situtation given that I have very deeply researched the lab leak narrative, from its genesis to its conclusion; and written a book about the topic.
If you are interested in the surprising details of the events that preceded for example the infamous Feb. 1 teleconference, here is the inside story. If you are just here for the quick look and refutation:
TL;DR. Paul got nothing. Less than nothing, actually the documents he provided, same as the documents that DNI Tulsi Gabbard released 2 weeks ago, are much more exculpatory than incriminating to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
They show a public health servant thrown into a position of large responsibility and public profile, who often acted in a very nuanced, measured way and in accordance with his knowledge, roles and responsibilities. Sometimes he was a bit too comfortable being admired and in the spotlight, and a workoholic with a controlling presense. Nothing outside the ordinary human experience in my reading.
Despite very harsh and unjustified public smear campaigns against him and furor within a new media ecosystem where shameless and connving politicians, media manipulators and grifters get rewarded for bad faith attacks, the fact that the best Senator Paul got after six years is mild insinuations based on private diaries kinda exposes a whole lot more about him and his motivations than Dr Fauci’s.
Conclusion
None of this is new or unexpected. Nobody should fall for this, but everybody should understand whats happening.
US Republicans have long given up on an evidence-based worldview and are engaged in perpetuating political convenient and self-serving fictions detached from factual reality.
Any type of “bombshell” they try to conjure up on decontextualized and cherry-picked emails has to be understood as a sometimes sloppy, sometimes more carefully crafted propaganda prop; and arguing within the frame of their baseless accusations without demanding scientific evidence and coherence with scientifically established facts is an error.
The reality is that lab leak truthers and conspiracy theorists have failed in 6 years to find a shred of evidence to support their belief in a lableak, or even to formulate a scientific lab leak theory that is consistent with and not contradicted by the evidence we already have.
That will not change no matter how many layers of human testimony and partisan interpretations of email communications, intelligence reports or private diaries they try to pile on to obfuscate that simple fact.
When journalists and the public are charged with assessing the validity of such supposed “bombshell revelations” (selective disclosures), manipulators count on us to be seduced by the allure of access to secret information, and argue about the content, rather than the context, of the release.
Which is a pity, because the content released this week was stale already years ago; yet the context surrounding the manipulative power of politicians and its calculated impact on public perception is more salient than ever today.