New details about the FBI’s push under the second Trump administration to investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci and find evidence Covid-19 came from a Chinese lab have emerged. Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was thrust into the political spotlight during the pandemic.
As health officials scrambled to find the source of the outbreak, a theory emerged that the deadly virus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology while scientists were researching bat coronaviruses. Many Trump supporters even believed Fauci and other researchers covered up the leak. There is still no definitive answer as to what caused the pandemic — and no concrete evidence of a cover-up — but, according to a New York Times report, the FBI and Justice Department are still investigating.
Early last year, then-Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino met with dozens of agents at the bureau’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, demanding to know why investigators had stalled a probe into the origins of the pandemic and why they were not more heavily scrutinizing the role of government scientists, current and former officials told the Times. Under this renewed push, FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors have sought evidence — including phone, email and payment records — related to at least eight scientists, including Fauci, according to the Times. When reached by The Independent about the new reporting, the FBI’s national press office said, “We don't have any comment.” The Independent has also reached out to the DOJ for comment.
David Morens, a former adviser to Fauci, pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to conceal federal records related to research on the pandemic’s origins. He was accused of using his private email account to intentionally get around public records laws while working at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. DOJ prosecutors in Maryland subpoenaed documents in Morens’ case in September 2025 as they sought evidence about Fauci, including any emails he sent to certain researchers from his personal account, according to documents reviewed by the Times.
The FBI’s Cleveland office also recently examined whether Fauci and other government scientists pressured virologists in early 2020 to understate the possibility that Covid-19 came from a lab, according to the Times. Just before leaving office in January 2025, then-President Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Fauci for any federal crimes he may have committed or taken part in since January 2014 as NIAID director or in service to the White House during the pandemic. Despite his protection from Biden, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during a Senate hearing in late July, refusing to answer questions about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ahead of the hearing, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, released more than 1,000 pages from a long-running diary Fauci kept. In an April 2021 entry, Fauci wrote that members of the “radical right wing” like Paul were trying to “connect me with the virus from WUHAN.” “They are saying that I deliberately worked with the Chinese together with [zoologist] Peter Daszak to create a virus that would be released to the world,” he wrote at the time. However, there are enough crazy people around to make this a problem.” The Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress in early August after he refused to answer questions at the Senate hearing.
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