On July 22, 2016, Dr. Anthony Fauci's personal computer was hit by a ransomware attack that encrypted his entire unprotected C-drive — a folder he'd originally created to store confidential files after the anthrax attacks. Letters, documents, classified material — gone. "I had originally created this for the confidential files that I made right after the anthrax attacks since I did not want them accessible to anyone," Fauci wrote in his diary. "However, I soon began putting other important documents into that folder — Bad idea!!!"

Nobody told us.

That ransomware hack is just one revelation buried in Fauci's personal diary entries, now obtained by Senator Rand Paul's Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and made available in a Senate reading room. The diary — spanning years of America's most powerful unelected health official's private thoughts — paints a picture that will surprise exactly no one who was paying attention, but now we have receipts.

Start with Trump. Fauci wasn't just quietly skeptical of the man who kept him employed. He was seething. "He is acting more and more bizarre. Should be impeached," Fauci wrote during the week of January 1-7, 2019, amid the government shutdown. During the 2016 campaign, he tracked Trump's stumbles like a opposition researcher. "Trump made a fool of himself in the debate on Monday 26 Sept," he wrote. When the Access Hollywood tape surfaced in October 2016: "Trump caught in Tape denigrating women." And later: "Trump acting very erratically. Continues to implode."

This is the man who stood at Trump's podium, nodded along at press conferences, and let America believe he was a neutral scientist serving the public interest.

Now the Chinese entries. In September 2017, Fauci hosted Gao Fu — Director General of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention — at NIH. His diary entry reads like a fan letter: "Big Chinese visitor day — Hosted Gao Fu (George) here at NIH. He is the Director General of the China CDC. Very smart and nice guy." The same visit included a broader Chinese delegation meeting at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where Fauci also met with Liu Fandong, Vice Premier of China, Li Bin, Minister of National Health and Family Planning, and Dr. Cao, Director of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

Very smart and nice guy. That's Fauci's assessment of the head of China's CDC — the same apparatus that would, a couple years later, oversee the most consequential public health coverup in modern history.

Senator Paul, who chairs the committee, summoned Fauci to testify in August. Fauci refused to answer questions, citing the Fifth Amendment — the constitutional right against self-incrimination. Paul's panel responded by referring Fauci to the Justice Department for contempt of Congress. "I think we should challenge the pardon, because it's an extraordinary pardon," Paul told Just The News in June. "It's a pardon not for a specific crime, and it's a pardon over a 10-year period."

That pardon — handed down by President Joe Biden covering all federal offenses from 2014 to 2024 — is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Destroying or concealing federal records carries a maximum of 3 years in prison and a $2,000 fine under the Federal Records Act. The pardon may have rendered that moot. But the diary itself survived, and it confirms what we suspected: Fauci treated the Trump administration as enemy territory while cozying up to the officials running China's public health infrastructure.

The guy who told 330 million Americans to mask up, lock down, and trust the science couldn't put a password on his laptop. Secret government files — files so sensitive he created a special hidden folder for them — lost to a ransomware attack in 2016. He kept his diary. He kept his autobiography notes. The classified material from the anthrax era didn't make it.

Fauci took the Fifth 22 times in August. The diary talked plenty.