“Please Delete This E-Mail.” Fauci Told Colleagues to Destroy Gain-of-Function Records in 2012. His Own Senior Adviser Just Pleaded Guilty to Doing It.
On March 4, 2012, Dr. Anthony Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, read a New York Times op-ed questioning why federal scientists were funding research to make bird flu more dangerous. His reply the next day, sent to NIH Director Francis Collins and NIAID Vaccine Research Center chief Gary Nabel, is now public record: “Please delete this e-mail and then delete from the deleted file.”
The underlying research was real, and reckless by its own creator’s account. Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier had spent 2011 engineering an H5N1 avian-flu strain capable of airborne spread between ferrets — the standard lab proxy for human transmission — and called it “probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make.” Two months before the email chain, Fauci had co-authored a Washington Post op-ed defending exactly this kind of research as “a risk worth taking.”
Fourteen years later, that email is no longer an isolated data point. It is the earliest entry in a documented pattern of Fauci instructing colleagues to delete records — a pattern that has since produced a completed federal guilty plea, a Senate contempt vote, and 111 invocations of the Fifth Amendment.
- 2012 — the year Fauci told NIH Director Francis Collins and NIAID's Gary Nabel to “delete this e-mail and then delete from the deleted file” — Daily Caller News Foundation, Aug. 28, 2026
- 111 — times Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment at a Senate HSGAC hearing chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — NPR, July 29, 2026
- Aug. 19, 2026 — the date David Morens, Fauci's senior NIAID adviser for sixteen years, pleaded guilty to concealing federal records — U.S. Department of Justice
- 8 months — how long HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says it took to recover Fauci's diary and phone from “11 separate servers” — RFK Jr.
- Aug. 6, 2026 — the party-line Senate HSGAC vote holding Fauci in contempt of Congress and referring him to the Justice Department — The Hill
The chain that resurfaced this week runs two days: March 4-5, 2012. New York Times editorial writer Philip Boffey had just published a piece asking why federal money was funding research to engineer a more transmissible bird flu. Fauci forwarded it to Collins, then head of the National Institutes of Health, and to Nabel, who ran NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center. His instructions to both men were explicit.
“Please delete this e-mail and then delete from the deleted file.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, email to Francis Collins and Gary Nabel — March 5, 2012, per documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The research Fauci was defending was Ron Fouchier’s 2011 project at Erasmus Medical Center, where his lab engineered an H5N1 avian-influenza strain capable of spreading through the air between ferrets. Fouchier did not soften what he had built.
“Probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make.”
Ron Fouchier, virologist, Erasmus Medical Center, describing his own H5N1 research
No court has adjudicated what Fauci meant by that instruction, and characterizing it as an attempt to destroy records is, at this stage, an allegation grounded in the documents themselves rather than a judicial finding. But the instruction did not stay isolated to 2012.
Our investigation reveals that Anthony Fauci destroyed government records and recommended that other members of government delete emails and then delete them from their deleted files.
Eight years after the Fouchier email, Fauci used nearly identical language twice more — this time about the origins of COVID-19. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), separately surfaced a Feb. 2, 2020 email and a July 20, 2020 email in which Fauci told recipients: “please delete this e-mail after you read it.”
The Feb. 2, 2020 email is tied to the drafting of “Proximal Origins,” the paper that shaped early public messaging dismissing a lab-leak hypothesis for COVID-19 — recipients included Collins and Wellcome Trust director Jeremy Farrar. The July 20, 2020 email is personal: in it, Fauci disparaged Paul directly to colleagues, calling him “full of s***,” before the same delete-after-reading instruction.
Former CDC Director Robert Redfield, who led the agency under the first Trump administration, has reviewed the unredacted 2012 email and says it shows an “aggressive attempt” to control the narrative around gain-of-function research — the same language he has used to describe the broader COVID-origins messaging effort Fauci is now accused of managing behind closed doors.
Independent researcher Hans Mahncke, who has tracked HSGAC’s records requests since the committee’s earliest document releases, put the pattern in blunt terms when an earlier tranche of email evidence first surfaced in September 2025.
And there it is. Incontrovertible proof that Fauci lied under oath... He explicitly ordered people to delete emails...
The pattern is no longer just alleged. David Morens, Fauci’s senior scientific adviser at NIAID from 2006 to 2022, was indicted by the Justice Department in April 2026 on three counts: conspiracy against the United States, destruction and alteration of federal records, and concealment of records. Prosecutors said Morens used a personal email account to evade Freedom of Information Act requests and deleted COVID-era NIH grant records.
On Aug. 19, 2026, Morens pleaded guilty in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. Sentencing is set for Nov. 12, 2026. It is the first completed criminal conviction to emerge from the years-long congressional effort to determine whether Fauci’s inner circle destroyed records tied to COVID-19’s origins — and it required proving nothing about Fauci himself, only about the man who worked beside him for sixteen years.
The plea landed three weeks after Paul had already laid out the broader case against Fauci in his HSGAC opening statement — a recap that commentator Benny Johnson pushed to a national audience.
Fauci knew COVID came from a Chinese lab... Declared 'I am the science'
House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY), whose committee took Fauci’s sworn 2024 testimony denying he had ever destroyed federal records, has pointed to the Morens plea and the resurfaced 2012 email as direct contradictions of that testimony.
Current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said his department spent months searching for Fauci’s government diary and phone before locating them.
“It took us about eight months to dig these out of 11 separate servers, where they had been sequestered and secreted.”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on recovering Fauci's diary and phone
Paul and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) eventually received the diary — covering December 2019 through December 2022 — and Paul made it public on July 25, 2026. Four days later, at a July 29 HSGAC hearing, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination more than 100 times, widely reported at 111, and accused Paul of an “unhinged obsession” with him.
It was not the first time the delete requests had forced Fauci back before lawmakers. The New York Post had already reported, in September 2025, that Paul’s committee uncovered an earlier round of “delete” instructions and summoned Fauci to answer for them.
Dr. Anthony Fauci called back before Congress after his requests to 'delete' government emails uncovered by Sen. Rand Paul
HSGAC voted along party lines on Aug. 6, 2026 to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress and referred the matter to the Justice Department. The Hill has reported that “challenges loom” over whether that referral produces charges — DOJ’s decision remains pending as of this writing. One complication working against Fauci: his Biden-era autopen pardon covers only Jan. 1, 2014 through Jan. 19, 2025. His 2026 testimony, and any conduct examined this year, sit entirely outside that pardon’s protection.
Dr. Anthony Fauci — former NIAID Director (1984-2022), former White House Chief Medical Advisor (2021-22, Biden administration). Testified under oath in 2024 that he never destroyed federal records; invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times on July 29, 2026; held in contempt by HSGAC on Aug. 6, 2026.
David Morens — former senior NIAID adviser to Fauci (2006-2022). Pleaded guilty Aug. 19, 2026 to concealing federal records; sentencing Nov. 12, 2026.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — HSGAC Chairman, led the investigation that surfaced the 2012 and 2020 emails.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY) — House Oversight Chairman, took Fauci’s contradicted 2024 sworn testimony.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) — received Fauci’s diary alongside Paul.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — current HHS Secretary, oversaw the eight-month recovery of Fauci’s diary and phone.
Robert Redfield — former CDC Director (Trump administration), called the unredacted 2012 email an “aggressive attempt” to control the record.
The Justice Department’s charging decision on the HSGAC contempt referral is still pending. Whatever DOJ decides, it will not fall under Fauci’s existing pardon — the Biden-era autopen grant that shielded him covers a fixed 2014-2025 window and does not reach conduct examined in 2026.
The Committee has voted to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress and refer his conduct to the Department of Justice.
Redfield’s read on the unredacted 2012 chain — an “aggressive attempt” to control the record — now connects three separate controversies: a decade-old gain-of-function fight, a pandemic-origins narrative Fauci helped shape, and a completed federal guilty plea from the man who sat beside him for sixteen years. Only one of the three has produced a conviction so far.
One completed guilty plea. One contempt referral pending at the Justice Department. Three separate instructions, fourteen years apart, all reading like variations on the same sentence: delete this, then delete it again. Anthony Fauci told Congress under oath he never destroyed federal records. His own senior adviser has since pleaded guilty to doing exactly that — and the 2012 email now sits alongside two more from 2020, each one telling colleagues to make sure the record vanished twice.
