Last Updated on 4 hours ago by TodayWhy Editorial
For about two years he was one of the most recognised people on the planet. Before that he spent four decades running a research institute most Americans could not name. Now he is back in the news for refusing to answer questions.
So who is Anthony Fauci, what did he actually do, and what exactly are his critics accusing him of?
This is a career summary and a plain account of the disputes — including the arguments on both sides, because almost every claim about him is contested by someone.
The short version
Anthony Fauci is an American physician and immunologist, born in Brooklyn on 24 December 1940. He is 85.
He directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022 — 38 years, across seven presidents of both parties. He was the principal architect of PEPFAR, the global AIDS relief programme, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for that work from George W. Bush in 2008.
During COVID-19 he became the public face of the US response, first under Donald Trump and then as Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser. He retired at the end of 2022 and now teaches at Georgetown.
Anthony Fauci is also, since 2020, one of the most polarising figures in American public life.
Before COVID: the AIDS years
This is the part of the record least familiar to people who first heard of him in 2020, and it is not what most would expect.
Anthony Fauci joined the National Institutes of Health in 1968 and became chief of NIAID’s Laboratory of Immunoregulation in 1980. When the first AIDS cases appeared in 1981, his lab turned to the unknown illness. He became NIAID director in 1984, at the height of the epidemic.
In those years he was attacked ferociously — from the left. AIDS activists accused the federal government of deliberate neglect because the disease was associated with gay men. Protesters hanged him in effigy. The writer Larry Kramer called him a murderer in print.
What happened next is why the episode is still studied. Rather than avoid his critics, Fauci met them. He brought activists into the drug-approval conversation, pushed to streamline testing of experimental treatments, and lobbied for wider access before trials concluded. Many of the people who had denounced him became allies.
In 2003 he was one of the principal architects of PEPFAR under President Bush. The programme has been credited with saving well over twenty million lives in the developing world.
What Anthony Fauci did during COVID-19
Anthony Fauci served on Trump’s coronavirus task force from early 2020, appearing at televised briefings that made him a household name — and, quickly, a political target.
He advocated for restrictions: distancing, closures, later masks and vaccination. He frequently contradicted Trump’s more optimistic public statements, and by the end of that term he had been substantially sidelined. Under Biden from January 2021 he became chief medical adviser and helped shape the vaccine rollout.
More than a million Americans died. He retired in December 2022 and published a memoir, On Call, in 2024.
What is Anthony Fauci accused of?
The accusations against Anthony Fauci fall into four buckets. They are set out here as claims and counter-claims, because none has produced a criminal conviction and most remain genuinely disputed.
Funding risky research in Wuhan
The claim: NIAID grant money reached the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the non-profit EcoHealth Alliance, and funded gain-of-function work that could have created the pandemic virus. Critics say he then misled Congress by denying it.
The response: He and NIH have maintained the funded work did not meet the federal definition of gain-of-function research and that the viruses studied were too genetically distant to have become SARS-CoV-2. Much of the dispute is a fight over the definition of the term rather than the underlying facts.
Downplaying the lab-leak hypothesis
The claim: He helped steer early scientific opinion toward natural origin and against a laboratory accident, in part to protect research he had funded.
The response: He has said he kept an open mind, and the diary entries released in 2026 show he convened scientists in February 2020 to debate both possibilities and recorded the group as split. Intelligence agencies remain divided on origins to this day.
Shifting public health advice
The claim: His guidance changed repeatedly — most notoriously on masks, initially discouraged and later urged — and the changes eroded public trust.
The response: He acknowledged the shifts and argued that revising advice as evidence accumulates is how science is supposed to work, not evidence of dishonesty.
Overreach and personalising science
The claim: Critics argue school closures and mandates caused lasting harm and that he wielded influence disproportionate to his role. A remark widely quoted as equating criticism of him with attacks on science is often cited here.
The response: He has said decisions were made under extreme uncertainty with imperfect data, and that hindsight makes contested calls look obvious.
Why Republicans are pursuing him
The driving figure is Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a physician who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The two clashed repeatedly at hearings from 2021 onward; Fauci said in 2022 that Paul’s statements were generating death threats against him.
Paul’s committee spent months obtaining Fauci’s private journals covering December 2019 to December 2022. That produced the July 2026 hearing at which Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times — the first time in over 250 congressional appearances that he had done so.
Supporters of the inquiry frame it as overdue accountability for decisions that reshaped daily life. Critics frame it as a political exercise aimed at a retired official who already holds a preemptive pardon. Both characterisations are widely held.
The pardon
On 20 January 2025, in his final hours in office, Biden issued preemptive pardons to Fauci and several other officials he believed the incoming administration might target. The pardon covers conduct from 2014 to the end of Biden’s presidency.
Biden’s statement said the pardons should not be read as any acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and that accepting one should not be taken as an admission of guilt.
Why someone holding such a pardon would still decline to answer questions is a genuine legal puzzle, and we unpack it in a separate piece on whether you can plead the Fifth after being pardoned. The immediate hearing itself is covered in why Fauci pleaded the Fifth despite his pardon.
Frequently asked questions
What did Anthony Fauci do for a living?
He was a physician-scientist specialising in immunology and infectious disease, and directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. Since 2023 he has taught at Georgetown University.
How old is Anthony Fauci?
He was born on 24 December 1940, making him 85.
Is Fauci a Democrat or a Republican?
He served as a career civil servant, not a political appointee in the partisan sense, and advised seven presidents from both parties. He has generally declined to state a party affiliation publicly.
What is gain-of-function research?
Laboratory work that alters a pathogen so it gains a capability it lacked — for instance greater transmissibility. Supporters say it helps anticipate future outbreaks; critics say the risk of an accidental release outweighs the benefit. Whether specific NIAID-funded work met the official definition is central to the dispute.
Has Anthony Fauci been convicted of anything?
No. Anthony Fauci has not been charged with any crime. A former senior adviser, David Morens, has been indicted separately on charges including conspiracy and obstruction; that case does not involve charges against Fauci.
What awards has he received?
The National Medal of Science (2005), the Lasker Award for Public Service (2007), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2008) and the Robert Koch Gold Medal (2013), among others.
Where can I read a neutral reference biography?
Britannica’s entry on Anthony Fauci covers his early life, the AIDS years, the COVID period and the 2025 pardon, with sources.