Tulsi Gabbard used her final hours as Director of National Intelligence to release what she described as hundreds of pages of previously undisclosed communications and internal documents, records she says prove Dr. Anthony Fauci steered America's spy agencies away from investigating whether U.S.-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

The late-Thursday document dump, accompanied by a video statement posted to Gabbard's official X account, amounts to the most direct accusation yet from a sitting intelligence chief that Fauci exploited his role as a longtime adviser to agencies including the CIA to shield himself and his funding decisions from scrutiny.

The core allegation is straightforward: Fauci, who ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for decades, used his privileged position inside the intelligence community not to help investigators find the truth about COVID's origins, but to ensure they never looked too hard at the gain-of-function research his agency helped fund. And when he was asked about it under oath, Gabbard says, he lied.

What the documents show

The released records, as described by the Washington Examiner, paint a picture of Fauci operating as gatekeeper over the intelligence community's COVID origins inquiry. In June 2021, the same period when President Biden instructed the intelligence community to publish a report on the virus's origin, Fauci provided intelligence personnel with a curated list of virologists, epidemiologists, and forensic researchers to rely on in their investigations.

Two of the names on that list were Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina and Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance. Both had received NIAID funding. Both had connections to bat coronavirus research at the very Wuhan lab under investigation.

That detail alone should raise serious questions. The man whose agency funded the research under scrutiny was hand-picking the experts the intelligence community would consult about that research.

Emails from July 2021 between intelligence community personnel show internal disagreement about how much weight to give Fauci's guidance. One redacted intelligence official described Fauci as a subject matter expert "with a wealth of knowledge about current and historical research who probably knows better than most who the real Coronavirus experts are." Gabbard characterized this deference more bluntly in her video statement:

"Senior analysts praised Dr. Fauci, not as a policy maker, but as what they called an unbiased guide to the real coronavirus experts, while deliberately ignoring experts who might dissent from Fauci's narratives."

The whistleblower trail

The documents also reveal a whistleblower dimension that had been largely hidden from public view. In August 2021, a whistleblower came forward alleging that Fauci lied under oath before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee when Sen. Rand Paul questioned him about gain-of-function research.

The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community shared the existence of that whistleblower report with House and Senate intelligence committees. But the Inspector General characterized the complaint as one that "did not constitute a matter of urgent concern", a bureaucratic classification that effectively ensured it went nowhere fast.

Gabbard's office also said whistleblowers described a pattern of retaliation, professional setbacks, and intimidation directed at intelligence analysts who supported the lab-leak theory. Career CIA operations officer James Erdman, who previously worked with Gabbard's ODNI on the COVID origins investigation, testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in May alleging he personally experienced backlash for his whistleblowing.

Gabbard's characterization was pointed: "The message was clear: go along or be punished."

That pattern, dissent suppressed, whistleblowers sidelined, inconvenient questions buried, is one Americans have seen before from the intelligence community. Gabbard herself has released declassified testimony alleging the intelligence community manufactured narratives in other politically sensitive contexts during her tenure.

Fauci's testimony versus the records

The sharpest conflict in the released material concerns Fauci's 2024 appearance before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. When repeatedly asked whether he had spoken to the FBI, CIA, or other intelligence agencies concerning viral research, Fauci consistently replied, "not to my knowledge about COVID."

Gabbard says the newly released correspondence directly contradicts that sworn testimony. Newsmax reported that the declassified documents show Fauci met with CIA personnel on June 4, 2021, nearly a month after he denied funding gain-of-function research in a Senate hearing, and discussed specifics of the Wuhan lab's experiments. The documents reportedly indicate Fauci was "particularly interested" in the lab's work on pangolins and asked for specifics, while giving the impression he was "presumably not tracking" that research.

If accurate, the gap between Fauci's sworn statements and the documentary record is not a matter of fuzzy memory. It is a matter of verifiable fact.

Gabbard did not hold back. "He blatantly lied to Congress under oath during his 2024 testimony," she said in her video statement. She added: "The tactics that were used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook."

A broader pattern of concealment

Sen. Rand Paul, who has pursued Fauci on these questions for years, published evidence on June 11 indicating that Fauci had served as an adviser to the intelligence community on SARS genetic manipulation and bioweapons for more than two decades prior to COVID-19. That timeline matters. It means Fauci was not some outside consultant called in during a crisis. He was embedded in the intelligence apparatus long before the pandemic began, a position that gave him extraordinary influence over how agencies assessed biological threats.

This latest document release also fits into a broader pattern of disclosures from Gabbard's tenure. The New York Post reported that Gabbard previously declassified information revealing U.S. taxpayer funding of more than 120 biological labs in over 30 foreign countries, with some labs engaging in gain-of-function research with "very little visibility or oversight." In that earlier release, Gabbard explicitly named Fauci as someone who "lied to the American people" about the existence of those labs.

A federal moratorium on gain-of-function research was in place during the period when the research in question was allegedly conducted, a fact that makes the funding decisions all the more difficult to defend.

Leadership transition at ODNI

Gabbard's document release came on a day already marked by upheaval at the intelligence directorate. Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a close ally of President Trump, arrived at ODNI headquarters on Thursday and requested a list of all employees as he evaluates potential staffing changes. CNN, citing two unnamed sources, reported that Pulte is considering significant workforce reductions that could affect hundreds of employees.

Pulte is expected to take over as acting director of national intelligence on Friday. Trump's permanent pick for the role, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, had been moving toward quick Senate confirmation until Trump called off the hearing on Truth Social earlier in the week.

The timing of Gabbard's release, her final act before handing the office to Pulte, ensures the documents enter the public record regardless of what the next DNI chooses to do with them. Breitbart reported that the release included never-before-seen communications and whistleblower testimony describing retaliation and career setbacks for analysts who challenged Fauci's conclusions.

What remains unanswered

For all the volume of the release, hundreds of pages, significant questions remain. Fauci has not publicly responded to the latest allegations. The precise nature of his advisory role with the CIA, whether formal or informal, compensated or voluntary, is not fully detailed in the available material. The full content of the August 2021 whistleblower report has not been published. And the specific gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that triggered the intelligence community's concerns have not been described in granular scientific detail.

There is also the question of legal exposure. Just The News reported that Gabbard framed the release as exposing how Fauci "lied to Congress while under oath in 2024." Newsmax noted that Trump has declared Biden's preemptive pardon of Fauci null and void, arguing Biden was mentally diminished and incapable of authorizing it. Whether that declaration carries legal weight is a separate and unresolved matter.

What is not in dispute is the scale of the underlying event. Millions of Americans lost loved ones, livelihoods, and years of normalcy to COVID-19. Gabbard opened her video statement with that fact: "The COVID pandemic caused tremendous hardship and pain for millions of our fellow Americans and countless people around the world."

The public deserves to know whether the man who stood at the podium and told them to trust the science was simultaneously working behind the scenes to make sure the science never pointed back at him.

The accountability question

A former EcoHealth Alliance leader, as Fox News reported, dismissed the revelations as a "nothing burger." That phrase has become reflexive in Washington whenever powerful people face uncomfortable disclosures. It was used about the laptop. It was used about the origins debate itself. It was used right up until the intelligence community quietly conceded the lab leak was the most likely explanation.

The American people were told for years that asking about a lab leak was misinformation. Social media companies censored it. News outlets dismissed it. Government officials who knew better stayed quiet or actively misled the public. Now hundreds of pages of internal records suggest the man at the center of the pandemic response was not just wrong, he was actively working to keep investigators from finding the right answers.

Gabbard put it simply: "After years of lies and censorship and cover-ups, the American people deserve transparency, truth, and accountability."

Transparency arrived on her last day in office. Truth is in the documents. Accountability is the part Washington always finds a way to skip.