Fauci Bragged in His Diary About Forcing California and New York to Shut Down Schools After Years of Claiming ‘I Had Nothing to Do With It’ * The Gateway Pundit * by Cassandra MacDonald

This directly contradicts Fauci’s repeated public claims that he had “nothing to do with” school closures, a lie he peddled for years even as American kids suffered catastrophic learning loss, mental health crises, and social isolation under the policies he helped create.
The bombshell comes from the 1,141-page “Tony’s Diary” package released this week by Senator Rand Paul, Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, ahead of Fauci’s sworn testimony before the panel on Wednesday.
8/ Read the documents yourself: https://t.co/tFeZ7hqsJ4
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) July 27, 2026
Fauci has repeatedly insisted publicly that critics were wrong to blame him for the school closures.
“They always come back and say, Fauci was responsible for closing schools. I had nothing to do—I mean, let’s get down to the facts,” he claimed in 2022.
Fauci says he had “nothing to do” with school closures.
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 16, 2022
However, on March 9, 2020, Fauci wrote that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called seeking advice on whether to close schools in the Orthodox Jewish section of Westchester County, where cases were higher than the rest of New York City. “I tell him yes,” Fauci wrote.
Six days later, on March 15, he documented a call with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“I spoke with Bill de Blasio (Mayor — NYC) and convinced him based on what I was saying publicly and my conversation saying to close the NYC schools (he had already decided based on what I was saying on TV.) I went on to tell him he should close the bars and restaurants in NYC. He said that he would base this on my recommendation.”
The same day, Fauci noted a similar conversation with Ann O’Leary, chief of staff to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
“Ann said that based on my TV appearances today and yesterday, the Governor has decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants.”
The next day, New York City’s public schools shut down.
Fauci then pushed aggressive 15-day mitigation guidelines that explicitly called for closing schools where community spread existed.
Far from distancing himself, the diary shows him later mocking President Donald Trump’s efforts to reopen, blasting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for moving forward, and privately complaining that Trump “does not care about the safety of the children” while Fauci worked to limit reopenings in areas with any uncontrolled spread.
Only after months of damage did he begin walking back the hard line, even as he continued urging delays in places like North Carolina.
As The Gateway Pundit detailed in a previous report on the diary, the same documents prove that former President Barack Obama personally coached Fauci through the 2021 Beaglegate firestorm, deployed his political fixer Eric Schultz, and helped weaponize The Washington Post against the taxpayer watchdog group White Coat Waste Project after the organization exposed NIAID’s funding of grotesque experiments in which beagles were locked in cages so infected sand flies could eat them alive.
In a statement to The Gateway Pundit, WCW Senior VP Justin Goodman wrote:
“From the moment we exposed Beaglegate, the Washington establishment—bureaucrats, politicians and the corporate media—circled the wagons to defend Fauci over his funding of deadly dog labs. Now, Fauci’s own diary reveals that former President Barack Obama personally helped him coordinate a covert damage-control campaign to discredit White Coat Waste after we ignited what The Washington Post called ‘the biggest firestorm yet for Fauci.’”
Other diary entries show Fauci’s bizarre obsession with his own celebrity status even as COVID deaths mounted and the country locked down.
On March 10, 2020, he wrote, “For better or worse, I am becoming an international celebrity. Calls from all over the world.”
By May 2020, with nearly 100,000 Americans dead, he recorded that “the situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson in the world.”
He tracked “The Fauci cult,” invitations to Dancing with the Stars, SNL spoofs, bobbleheads, and celebrity Instagram sessions while fretting that the White House was upset he was outshining Trump.
LOL!!! Fauci, complaining in Jan. 2013 about the CDC hindering his TV career: It's "pure jealousy that I am a 'rock star' stealing their thunder." pic.twitter.com/FJbTHXcl2O
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 27, 2026
Senator Paul highlighted these entries, noting that Fauci’s private writings and public statements are “two different stories,” and pointed to evidence that Fauci directed staff to destroy federal records, a potential cover-up he plans to confront under oath.
Additional pages indicate Fauci privately believed the COVID case fatality rate was far lower than the figures he gave lawmakers under oath.
In one early entry, he and former CDC Director Tom Frieden agreed the virus was acting “like a bad influenza” with a case fatality rate “more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%,” yet in March 2020 House testimony Fauci claimed overall mortality around three percent and later said it was roughly one percent, ten times more lethal than seasonal flu.
Early 2020 entries also show Fauci was told by top virologists that the virus’s furin cleavage site raised real doubts about a natural origin, with about half believing it looked “constructed,” even as he publicly dismissed the lab-leak theory for years.
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