Fauci appears before the Senate on July 29: Wuhan, newspapers, vaccines and why they accuse him of COVID

Anthony Fauci, the doctor who became the face of the response to COVID-19 in the United States, returns to Capitol Hill this week at the most tense moment of a years-long Republican investigation. On Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. (Washington time), he will testify under oath before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Senator Rand Paul. The subpoena comes days after Paul published Fauci's private diaries and amid accusations about financing a Chinese laboratory, the origin of the virus and the management of the pandemic.

What to expect on Wednesday, July 29

The official calendar of the Senate lists the hearing titled “Testimony of Anthony Fauci” for July 29, 2026. According to USA Today and the Washington Examiner, Paul issued a subpoena in June after months of failed negotiations: Fauci had agreed to appear and then refused to do so voluntarily.

Paul has said publicly that he does not expect Fauci to tell the truth and that he wants to "confront" him with documents accumulated over years. The central themes will be:

• whether the NIH/NIAID funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology;
• whether Fauci lied to Congress by denying it;
• emails in which he supposedly asked to delete messages;
• his role in the scientific article Proximal Origin (March 2020);
• whether he influenced the intelligence community to discard the lab leak theory;
• contradictions between his private diaries and his public statements.

The hearing can be followed live on C-SPAN. An immediate legal verdict is not expected: Fauci received a pre-emptive pardon from Joe Biden in January 2025.

What was being investigated in Wuhan and what it was for

To understand the accusations, we must separate two things that are often mixed: the research which was financed with money from the NIH and the DEFUSE proposal to DARPA, which was not approved.

The funded project: Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence

The flow of money was: NIH/NIAID → EcoHealth Alliance (Peter Daszak) → Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to Science Feedback and government documents, the stated goal was pandemic preparedness:

• sampling bats in caves in southern China (Yunnan);
• sequence unknown coronaviruses;
• study spike proteins that could infect human cells;
• create chimeric viruses (hybrids of bat coronaviruses with SARS or MERS);
• test in humanized mice the risk of jumping to humans.

The NIH maintains that this work was not gain-of-function according to its official definitions and that the viruses studied were genetically distant from SARS-CoV-2. Paul and other Republicans claim the opposite: that these experiments did increase the danger and that Fauci covered it up.

DEFUSE: the proposal that DARPA rejected

In 2018, EcoHealth submitted to DARPA the DEFUSE project (~$14 million) to “defuse” the risk of bat coronaviruses, including more aggressive experiments and vaccinating wild bats with aerosols. DARPA rejected the proposal due to gain-of-function risks. Critics maintain that some of these ideas could have been executed with NIH funds; the NIH denies this.

Why some say Fauci is “guilty” for global COVID

The political accusation follows a logical chain of five links:

1. Fauci headed the NIAID, which gave the money.
2. That money financed dangerous research in Wuhan.
3. COVID escaped from that laboratory.
4. Fauci covered up the origin of the laboratory.
5. Therefore, it is responsible for millions of deaths.

If the virus had a natural origin—as a good part of the scientific community maintains—the chain breaks at the third link. US intelligence has not reached a definitive consensus. Paul has said that "all the evidence points to the laboratory", but also that there is no absolute certainty.

In June 2026, former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified hundreds of pages about Fauci and COVID. However, media such as CNN analyzed the documents and concluded that they do not conclusively demonstrate that Fauci "created" the virus or that there was a proven conspiracy.

The newspapers published on July 25

On Friday July 25, 2026, Paul published thousands of pages of Fauci's personal diaries written between December 2019 and December 2022. According to Newsweek and Fox News, among which they document:

• calls to Donald Trump in February 2020 not to downplay the virus;
• frustration with the White House when, according to Fauci, they "stopped recognizing" the outbreak;
• his growing media fame and encounters with celebrities;
• internal debates about the possible origin of the virus.

Paul will use those diaries to contrast what Fauci wrote privately with what he said publicly and to Congress. Conservative media emphasizes his “obsession with fame”; others highlight that they also register early warnings about the severity of the virus.

What do vaccines have to do with it?

Vaccines do not explain the origin of COVID, but they do explain much of the mistrust of Fauci:

• The NIAID collaborated with Moderna on one of the first mRNA vaccines; NIH received ~$400 million in royalties from Moderna at the institutional level.
• Fauci denies getting rich from COVID vaccines; his personal royalties come from previous research, according to FactCheck.org.
• He was the visible face of "get vaccinated, wear a mask, stay home", clashing with Trump over hydroxychloroquine and other treatments.
• Critics accuse a double criterion: requiring clinical trials for some drugs but urgently promoting vaccines; Fauci maintains that he always asked for rigorous scientific evidence.

The conspiracy narrative unites everything into a single story – “he financed the virus in Wuhan and sold the solution with vaccines” – but Wuhan and vaccines are separate processes and that chain is not proven.

The two narratives in conflict

Chronology

• 2014–2019: NIAID funds EcoHealth; subcontract to Wuhan.
• 2018: DARPA rejects DEFUSE proposal.
• 2020–2022: Fauci leads COVID response; repeated clashes with Paul in the Senate.
• 2022: Fauci retires from the government.
• Jan 2025: Biden grants preemptive pardon to Fauci.
• Jun 18, 2026: Gabbard declassifies documents on Fauci and COVID.
• Jun 2026: Paul issues subpoena to Fauci.
• July 25, 2026: Paul publishes Fauci diaries.
• July 29, 2026: Hearing in the Senate.

In summary

This week brings not a new COVID outbreak, but the political climax of a years-long Republican investigation. Fauci returns to the Capitol on Wednesday with Paul armed with diaries, declassified documents and years of personal confrontation. It is an act of political accountability, not a scientific verdict on the origin of the virus — although it could bring new information to light.

Update (July 27, 2026): Preparatory note based on USA Today, Newsweek, Fox News, Washington Examiner, CNN, Senate calendar, Science Feedback and FactCheck.org. The hearing is scheduled for July 29, 2026.