"Please delete this email after you had read it." That was Dr. Anthony Fauci's instruction to colleagues at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Not a one-time slip — a pattern stretching back to at least 2009, according to newly surfaced internal memos reported by Just The News.
One email went further: "Please delete this email and then delete from the deleted file." Delete, then delete the delete. The man who told America to "follow the science" was running a cleanup operation on his own paper trail.
The memos, unearthed by investigative journalist John Solomon, span more than a decade — from September 26, 2009, through July 12, 2021 — and reveal Fauci issuing explicit deletion instructions to NIAID staff including his deputy Greg Folkers and top deputy Dr. Cliff Lane. The Federal Records Act requires government agencies to preserve their federal work records, including emails, in nearly all cases. Fauci's instructions appear to run directly counter to that obligation.
But the email scrubbing is only half the story. The memos also show Fauci coordinating with intelligence agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic — including the CIA, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The nation's top infectious disease bureaucrat wasn't just advising on public health. He was steering spy agencies.
Consider the timeline. On February 2, 2020, Fauci was in communication with scientists Robert Garry, Kristian Andersen, Eddie Holmes, and Andrew Rambaut — the same researchers who initially flagged COVID-19 as potentially engineered, then reversed course to advocate for a natural origin. By July 20, 2020, the deletion instructions were still flowing. The question isn't just what Fauci was hiding. It's who he was hiding it from — and for how long.
Fauci's former senior scientific adviser, David Morens, has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with records destruction at NIAID. That's not an allegation — it's a conviction. And yet Fauci himself remains shielded by a presidential pardon from President Biden covering the years 2014 through 2024.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul has been pressing the issue. On July 29, Fauci appeared before Congress and invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times. Not 10 times. Not 50. One hundred and eleven times. The man who spent two years lecturing Americans on transparency from behind a podium couldn't manage a single transparent answer under oath. He's since opened a legal defense fund.
The "due process" crowd will note the pardon covers the relevant period. Which is precisely the problem. A pardon doesn't mean innocence — it means the questions can't be answered through prosecution. The memos still exist. The deletion instructions still exist. The pattern of a senior government official systematically directing the destruction of federal records while coordinating with intelligence agencies during a global pandemic — that still exists, pardon or no pardon.
President Obama issued a 2016 mandate strengthening federal records preservation requirements. Fauci's own agency operated under those rules. His staff knew the rules. The National Archives knew the rules. Fauci's response, apparently, was to tell people to delete emails and then empty the trash.
A hundred and eleven Fifth Amendment invocations. A convicted deputy. A pardon that covers everything except the truth. And now, memos showing the instructions came from the top — in writing, with explicit directions to destroy the writing.
The science was never the point. The record was.
