Fauci Deleted ‘Doomsday’ Email on Gain-Of-Function Research, New Documents Reveal

Anthony Fauci allegedly didn't just tell a colleague to delete an email. He told him to delete it twice.

Newly obtained documents reveal that Fauci instructed a subordinate at the National Institutes of Health in 2012 to erase an email concerning one of the most controversial gain-of-function experiments ever conducted — and then make sure it disappeared from the deleted folder as well.

“Please delete this e-mail and then delete from the deleted file,” Fauci wrote from his NIH account, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

This development makes Fauci’s “pre-emptive pardon” look absolutely damning. That is because it is a federal crime to destroy government documents, as one of his colleagues found out personally.

Just 10 days before the new email was reported, Fauci's longtime senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. David Morens, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit offenses and defraud the United States in a case involving efforts to conceal federal records concerning coronavirus research.

The Department of Justice says Morens and others agreed to hide communications by conducting government business through his personal Gmail account. 

Those communications concerned efforts to restore funding for a bat-coronavirus grant that involved a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and to counter the argument that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory. 

In other words, destroying or concealing federal records at NIAID has already been established. One of Fauci's own senior advisers has pleaded guilty in a federal criminal case involving precisely that kind of conduct.

And now we have an email showing Fauci himself explicitly instructing someone to make a government email disappear. His colleague’s ‘guilty’ plea for the same crime makes the revelation even more extraordinary.

The email dates to March 2012, during the first great controversy over gain-of-function research. Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier had conducted experiments on H5N1 bird flu that produced an airborne-transmissible virus in ferrets. 

The work generated intense concern among biosecurity experts over what might happen if such an engineered pathogen escaped from a laboratory or if the published methods were exploited by terrorists.

Fauci was one of the research's most prominent defenders. In a December 2011 Washington Post op-ed co-authored with NIH Director Francis Collins and Gary Nabel, Fauci argued that the potential benefits made the research a “risk worth taking.”

New York Times science writer Philip Boffey wasn't convinced. In January 2012, the Times published an editorial warning about an “engineered doomsday” and the possibility that an escaped virus could kill hundreds of millions of people. Boffey followed up in March as controversy continued over whether the experimental details should be published.

One passage apparently got under Fauci's skin. Boffey noted that NIH had financed the research and had “its own reputation on the line” as it pushed federal biosecurity advisers to reconsider recommendations that sensitive details be withheld.

Fauci complained to Collins that Boffey was “really off base” and behaving like a “mischievous guy.” In another email the following morning, Fauci told a subordinate that people were “getting to Phil Boffey and he is swallowing it.”

Then came the instruction: “Please delete this e-mail and then delete from the deleted file.” 

There is a reason federal employees aren't supposed to make government records disappear. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2071, anyone who willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys covered federal records — or attempts to do so — can face a fine and up to three years in prison. The statute separately provides penalties for a person with custody of such a record who willfully and unlawfully destroys or conceals it. 

Whether this particular 2012 email satisfies every element necessary for prosecution under that statute is ultimately a question for investigators and prosecutors. But the instruction itself is difficult to explain away: Fauci wasn't asking somebody to clean up an overflowing inbox. He specifically instructed that the message be deleted and then removed from the deleted folder.

More importantly, it isn't the only such email investigators have uncovered. Sen. Rand Paul revealed in 2025 that Fauci instructed then-NIH Director Collins in a February 2, 2020 email to “please delete this e-mail after you read it.” In another July 2020 exchange, Fauci similarly instructed an NIH employee to delete his message after reading it. 

That creates another problem for Fauci: his testimony. During congressional questioning in 2024, Fauci was directly asked whether he had ever deleted an official record.

“No,” he answered.

He was asked whether he had ever attempted to obstruct FOIA or the release of public documents.

Again: “No.”

Asked specifically whether he deleted emails or records concerning the Wuhan lab or origins of the virus, Fauci once again denied doing so. 

But now we have the problem of Joe Biden's “preemptive” autopen pardon.

On his final day in office, Biden granted Fauci a sweeping preemptive pardon covering potential federal offenses dating back to January 1, 2014 — a highly unusual use of presidential clemency issued before Fauci had been charged with a crime.

And notice the date. 2014. The newly revealed “delete from the deleted file” email is from 2012.

That does not automatically mean Fauci can be prosecuted over it. There are obvious statute-of-limitations issues surrounding conduct more than a decade old, and determining whether the email constituted an unlawfully destroyed federal record would require establishing additional facts.

But the date means this particular conduct falls outside the temporal language of Biden's pardon. 

His former senior adviser has admitted to participating in a conspiracy to conceal federal records involving coronavirus research.

Here we have Fauci instructing someone to delete the email. Then delete the deletion.

So, is Fauci above the law? Americans are going to find out.

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