Anthony Fauci finally showed up to answer for the COVID years.
He just refused to actually answer anything.
And Megyn Kelly laid the blame for an entire generation of eroded government trust right at his feet.
A Hundred Pleadings and a Whole Lot of Silence
The hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee lasted about three hours. After a brief opening statement, Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to answer more than 100 questions.
Kelly put it plainly on her show: “Dr. Fauci whose been given a full presidential pardon pleaded the Fifth on the grounds that he does not want to incriminate himself, refusing to answer any and we do mean any questions. It happened over and over and over.”
Kelly went on to say Fauci took his use of the Fifth Amendment “to laughable lengths” before playing a clip of US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) — who publicly released Fauci’s diaries — asking the doctor if he had a folder in front of him, and Fauci refusing to answer.
Kelly called his repeated use of the Fifth Amendment “laughable” and asserted, “if his lips are moving, he’s lying.” She blasted Fauci for refusing to answer basic questions about his role in the COVID-19 pandemic and accused him of contradicting his public statements in newly leaked journal entries.
Former President Joe Biden granted Fauci a preemptive pardon in 2025, but Republicans claim it does not protect him from any alleged crimes committed after it was issued, such as perjuring himself at a Senate hearing. Senator Paul made clear he intends to test that theory.
Homeland Security Chair Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said the committee will vote on a contempt resolution against Fauci. Paul warned Fauci that his refusal to answer the committee’s questions would come at a cost. “It’s against the law to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today,” the senator said.
The Diary Says What Fauci Won’t
But the testimony itself was almost beside the point once the diary entries landed.
Fauci’s diary entries were released by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, detailing the doctor’s role during the COVID-19 crisis through conversations with President Donald Trump, governors, world leaders, media appearances and his personal observations as the pandemic unfolded in 2020.
Kelly referenced a 2023 interview Fauci did with the New York Times where he said, “Show me a school that I shut down. Never. Never.” She then pointed to diary entries including one in which Fauci allegedly wrote that he spoke with then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and “convinced him … to close the New York City schools.” Kelly said: “Then he has the nerve in 2023 to The New York Times, ‘Show me a school that I shut down. Never. I never did.'”
That’s not a minor discrepancy. That’s a man telling two completely different stories about one of the most consequential decisions made during the entire pandemic — decisions that kept millions of children out of classrooms for months, set back their development, and left working parents scrambling with no warning and no recourse.
Kelly slammed Fauci’s private journals for revealing overly cozy relationships with prominent journalists. She read entries detailing how Fauci fed interview questions to CNN anchors, such as Jake Tapper, and received supportive text messages from anchors like Dana Bash after contentious congressional hearings.
Kelly also highlighted an entry in which Fauci allegedly described having dinner at Tapper’s home. “Had dinner over at Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building,” the immunologist wrote, per Kelly.
In another entry, Fauci allegedly suggested questions for Tapper to ask another health official during a CNN interview. Kelly quoted an entry where Fauci allegedly wrote, “I gave Jake some questions to ask him,” before claiming Tapper later texted him about Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
Kelly’s reaction was unsparing: “What the hell? This is a federal official whom [Tapper] should be cross-examining and pressing and cynical of and pessimistic about. That’s what you get paid to do. Not be chum chum… All of it is so stomach-turning.”
According to the diary, “Dana Bash sent me a text: ‘I just watched the whole Jordan thing. Again, you’re a better man than I …. As our friend Wolf Blitzer said to me yesterday — no one would have blamed you if you said simply ‘Mr. Jordan, go f— yourself,'” Fauci wrote.
And Tapper and Bash both went on to moderate the 2024 CNN presidential debate. The same anchors who were privately cheerleading for Fauci behind the scenes were handed the microphone for the most-watched political event of the election year. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a media apparatus that protected its own.
Why Millions of Americans Stopped Trusting the Experts
Kelly didn’t stop at cataloging the lies. She connected the dots to something bigger.
Kelly held Fauci’s decisions during the pandemic responsible for much of what she called “conspiratorial thinking” in America. “But this guy, these lies at this level are exactly why people have become so suspicious of government narratives. Yeah. and believe that there are bad actors in the government who wish to control us and will tell massive hugely consequential lies to do it,” she said.
Kelly continued: “People ask how we got here, you know, where like everything’s being questioned. This this is how we got here.”
That’s a point worth sitting with for a moment. The same political class that spent years demanding Americans “trust the science” and labeling anyone who asked hard questions as dangerous or irresponsible — those same institutions handed the megaphone to a man whose own private diary now shows him coordinating with the press, taking credit for school closures he publicly denied, and quietly suffering a health event he kept from the public shortly after receiving the very vaccine he was mandating for the rest of the country.
Kelly was direct about where she places the blame: “I really don’t, I don’t have a lot of tolerance for, you know, blaming regular American citizens who are busy living their lives, who have gotten more conspiratorial in a way they definitely wouldn’t have been 10 years ago. I don’t blame them at all. I blame Dr. Anthony Fauci and the others who facilitated and enabled him.”
And she’s right. The people who raised questions about lockdowns, about school closures, about the origins of the virus, about mandates that stripped Americans of their right to make their own medical decisions — those people were not wrong to ask. Many of them turned out to be right. The ones who were wrong were the credentialed experts who lied about it and then ran to their CNN dinner companions to celebrate.
Fauci’s private diaries also revealed he suffered a pulmonary infarction in June 2021, but there is no verified medical evidence linking it to the COVID-19 vaccine. Kelly, who has spoken publicly about regretting her own decision to get vaccinated, raised the episode as another example of information the public was never given the chance to weigh for itself.
The broader damage here runs deeper than any single lie or any single diary entry. Fauci spent years as the face of government authority on public health. He appeared on television constantly. He advised presidents. He was celebrated on magazine covers and turned into a pop culture figure by the same media that was privately texting him encouragement after congressional hearings.
But the American people who lived through the lockdowns, who watched their kids fall behind, who lost jobs over vaccine mandates, who were told to cancel Thanksgiving while Fauci’s media allies reportedly enjoyed relaxed dinners — those Americans didn’t need a diary to tell them something was wrong. They already knew.
The diary just confirmed it in Fauci’s own handwriting.
And now he won’t answer a single question about any of it.
Senator Paul’s contempt vote may or may not produce consequences for Fauci personally. But the record is already written. The man who told Americans what they could and couldn’t do for years is now telling Congress he won’t explain himself. That tells you everything you need to know about how much he ever respected the people he claimed to be protecting.
Sources: Mediaite, AOL/MEGA, National Enquirer, Fox News, Axios, ABC News, NPR, Megyn Kelly Show (megynkelly.com), Brownstone Institute