Tulsi Gabbard spent her last night atop the U.S. intelligence community doing what she said she came to do, pulling back the curtain. The outgoing Director of National Intelligence released nearly 500 pages of newly declassified documents Thursday night, all aimed at one target: Dr. Anthony Fauci's role in shaping how America's spy agencies assessed the origins of COVID-19.
The document dump, issued through an ODNI press release, amounts to a parting shot from a DNI who made transparency on the pandemic's origins a defining cause of her tenure. It also lands squarely in the middle of a messy succession fight over who will run the intelligence community next.
At the center of the release are internal emails among intelligence officials, names redacted, debating how much access and influence Fauci should have over the intelligence community's 90-day COVID origins study ordered by President Trump. The documents show officials considered and ultimately rejected Fauci as an outside reviewer, warning he would be seen as having a conflict of interest. But the emails also reveal that Fauci recommended specific researchers the IC should interview, and that at least one official was eager to follow his lead.
One redacted intelligence official described the situation in plain terms in a declassified email: "For those who don't know me, I'm the [REDACTED] and, as such, leading the [intelligence community's] 90-day POTUS COVID origin study. Per below, Dr Fauci recommended that the IC reach out to the below individuals who were coauthors of the attached paper as part of the study."
Another official questioned whether it was wise for the IC to take direction from Fauci, "particularly given the various strong views on the subject and statements regarding their own conclusions." That concern was brushed aside. A colleague responded that Fauci was not a policymaker in this context but rather a subject-matter expert:
"In this particular case, given Dr Fauci's background we absolutely would like to follow-up on his outreach suggestions. In this case he's not a policymaker....he's a SME with a wealth of knowledge about current and historical research who probably knows better than most who the real Coronavirus experts are."
The tension in those emails is hard to miss. One side of the intelligence community saw Fauci as a conflicted figure who should be kept at arm's length. The other treated him as an indispensable guide, the very man whose funding decisions were under scrutiny helping steer the investigation into what went wrong.
The press release accompanying the documents did not hold back. It alleged that "Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus' lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives."
It went further, claiming the documents "expose Fauci's direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research."
Those are allegations from the outgoing DNI's office, not adjudicated findings. But they carry weight, because they are backed by the government's own internal correspondence, now available for public review.
Gabbard had been racing to declassify COVID origins and Havana syndrome records before her departure, and this release represents the capstone of that effort.
Supporting reporting fills in critical gaps. The New York Post reported that the declassified files reveal Fauci met privately with CIA officials on June 4, 2021, just weeks after he told Congress under oath that the National Institutes of Health had not funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. During that briefing, Fauci reportedly expressed interest in Wuhan lab pangolin experiments while steering focus away from the lab leak theory.
The Post also reported that a whistleblower complaint alleging Fauci lied to Congress was redirected by then-DNI Avril Haines to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra rather than an impartial inspector general, a routing decision that effectively buried the complaint within the very department Fauci had led.
The Washington Examiner detailed how Fauci briefed the National Security Council on June 4, 2021, and recommended subject-matter experts, including authors of the "Proximal Origin" paper, who had potential conflicts of interest. The Examiner's reporting shows intelligence officials deferred heavily to Fauci's expertise rather than conducting independent analysis.
Sen. Rand Paul, who has pursued Fauci on these questions for years, weighed in. "On her last day, @DNIGabbard drops a bombshell with even more evidence of Fauci's collusion with a politicized intelligence community," Paul posted, calling the release additional proof of "the truth about the lab-leak origins and Fauci's lies to Congress under oath."
Fauci himself has denied wrongdoing. At a July 2021 Senate hearing, he stated flatly: "I have not lied before Congress. I have never lied. Certainly not before Congress. Case closed."
The declassified emails suggest the case is anything but closed.
One detail in the Newsmax reporting adds a bitter edge to the timing. The document release came more than a month after a five-year statute of limitations deadline passed, meaning Fauci could no longer be charged with perjury for his earlier congressional testimony, even if prosecutors concluded he had lied.
That timeline raises its own uncomfortable questions. If the intelligence community had these documents years ago, why did it take until Gabbard's final hours in office to make them public? And why did the previous DNI route a whistleblower complaint about Fauci's testimony away from an independent inspector general?
Rep. Darrell Issa did not wait for answers. As Breitbart reported, Issa called for an official investigation on two counts: perjury before Congress and cover-up.
"We do have to do is specifically get to an official investigation and charges on two major counts, the perjury count before Congress, and the cover-up."
Issa added that "it appears as though he willfully impeded Congress and everyone else in getting to the truth, which probably cost even more lives."
Gabbard left ODNI to care for her husband, who has a rare form of cancer. Her departure was personal, but her final act was unmistakably political, a deliberate effort to make Fauci, COVID origins, and federal funding of overseas virus research part of her closing legacy atop the intelligence community.
That legacy also includes her earlier declassification of documents related to U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, which vindicated warnings she had issued years earlier. The ODNI press release accompanying Thursday's document release referenced U.S. government funding for over 120 foreign biolabs in more than 30 countries, though the article body did not elaborate on those figures.
Her successor is Bill Pulte, the construction businessman and former Federal Housing Finance Agency director whom Trump tapped as acting intelligence director. Pulte's appointment has drawn bipartisan fire. Senate Majority Leader John Thune put it bluntly:
"We don't need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there."
Republican Sens. John Cornyn, Bill Cassidy, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis have all voiced opposition or concern. Democrats including Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, Mark Warner, and Dick Durbin have raised alarms that Pulte would weaponize the intelligence apparatus against the president's political opponents, a charge rooted in allegations that Pulte used his FHFA authority for similar purposes.
Trump's permanent nominee for the post, former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, is widely seen as a less contentious pick. But his confirmation has stalled because Trump said he is holding up the nomination to pressure Congress to pass a voter identification measure.
The result is an intelligence community in limbo, led on an interim basis by a housing official with no intelligence background, while the permanent nominee waits in a holding pattern created by an unrelated legislative fight. The same senators now questioning Pulte's qualifications could have confirmed Clayton weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the broader question of who will ultimately lead the intelligence community remains open, with names like Elise Stefanik already circulating.
For all the material Gabbard released, significant gaps remain. The specific paper Fauci recommended to the intelligence community has not been publicly identified. The names of the intelligence officials who debated his role remain redacted. The identity of the CIA whistleblower who previously testified about Fauci's influence over COVID origins assessments has not been disclosed.
And the central question, whether Fauci knowingly lied under oath to Congress, remains a matter of allegation, not adjudication. The ODNI press release says he did. Fauci says he didn't. The emails show, at minimum, that he was far more involved in shaping the intelligence community's COVID origins work than his congressional testimony suggested.
Gabbard, who also pushed back on the administration over FISA surveillance powers during her tenure, framed the release as a matter of public trust. Her office stated plainly: "After years of lies, censorship, and cover-ups, the American people deserve transparency, truth, and accountability."
Nearly 500 pages of declassified documents now sit in the public record. The man at the center of them has denied everything. And the statute of limitations has already run out. If that sequence doesn't tell you how Washington works, nothing will.