Grand Theft America / Receipt power-2026-08-10-085
Senators publish texts from Fauci's government phone, handed over by HHS
Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul publish text messages taken from Anthony Fauci's former government phone, which the Department of Health and Human Services provided to the Senate subcommittee investigating him.
What happened
The senators released the messages online on Monday. They said the phone held more than 34,000 messages and 522 voicemails, and published screenshots of 11 texts sent during Fauci's tenure as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Republican members of the subcommittee had voted the previous week to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times in a hearing. Ahead of that hearing the committee also released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci's personal diary from 2019 to 2022.
Why it matters
An executive department handed a former official's device to the committee seeking his prosecution, and the committee published selected contents from it while a criminal referral was pending. The investigative power and the publication power are being used by the same actors against the same named individual.
Receipt details
- Phase 2
- Turn law enforcement inward
- Prosecute political opponents
