GOP senators release texts from Fauci’s government cellphone

Max Rego Mon, August 10, 2026 at 10:19 PM UTC

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Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) on Monday released text messages Dr. Anthony Fauci sent and received in 2021 regarding the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant women.

Obtained from Fauci’s government cellphone, the text messages are among more than 34,000 on the device, according to Johnson’s office. The lawmakers also obtained 522 voicemails from the phone.

The Hill has reached out to Fauci’s legal representatives for comment.

In a January 2021 text chain Fauci was on with Drs. Vivek Murthy and Rochelle Walensky — the surgeon general and director, respectively, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the Biden administration — the trio discussed when pregnant women should get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Murthy asked on Jan. 25, “For pregnant women considering getting the vaccine, are you aware of any data or theoretical reason why vaccinating early vs late in pregnancy would be preferred? And any sense of when there will be more robust data on vaccine risk in pregnant women?”

After Walensky noted that 15,000-plus pregnant women were enrolled in the CDC’s V-safe vaccine safety monitoring system, Fauci wrote there “are no data or theoretical reason to believe that vaccinating early versus later in pregnancy would be preferred.”

Fauci added, “Yet, some people (even female health care professionals) feel concerned about injecting a ‘genetic’ vaccine very early in pregnancy.”

The then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) also wrote there “is this misperception” the mRNA vaccine impacts recipients’ genes.

Nearly two hours later, Fauci wrote, “I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of. Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”

Cytokines are a broad category of proteins that function as chemical messengers in one’s immune system.

Walensky and Murthy agreed with Fauci, writing he made a “good point.”

Then on Jan. 26, amid a discussion on the World Health Organization advising against pregnant women taking the Moderna vaccine, Fauci wrote pregnant women “must weigh the potential risks against the benefits” of getting immunized.

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“COVID-19 can be a serious disease especially in pregnancy,” Fauci noted, adding that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists permitted pregnant women to choose whether to get the vaccine.

A week after his text conversation with Murthy and Walensky, Fauci said the FDA had so far found “no red flags” among the 10,000-plus pregnant women who participated in COVID vaccine trials to that point.

“I would rather take my chances with the vaccine than getting infected while I’m pregnant, because of the adverse effect and adverse outcome on pregnancy [of getting COVID],” Fauci told Dr. Howard Bauchner, then the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Johnson, who along with Paul has long criticized Fauci for his handling of the pandemic, said Monday his investigation into the former federal health official “has only just begun.”

The Wisconsin Republican also said Friday the obtained texts are from roughly 2014 up to “a few days before” Fauci left the NIAID in December 2022.

“My staff can’t guarantee that everything was preserved,” Johnson told Catherine Herridge on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight.” “What is odd is most of those text messages are associated with a phone number. He only had three contacts, which is pretty odd.”

Johnson also said the investigation will “take some time,” noting the need to protect individuals’ privacy.

The move from Paul and Johnson comes less than a week after Republicans on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel approved a resolution holding Fauci in contempt of Congress. Last month, Fauci pleaded the Fifth Amendment 111 times during testimony before the committee.

While criminal referrals from a committee usually go to the full Senate for a vote, Paul previously indicated he planned to send it directly to the Justice Department to not “waste time.”

at 6:19 p.m. EDT.

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