Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard used her final hours in office to release declassified memos showing the Biden administration steered an intelligence community whistleblower complaint against Dr. Anthony Fauci away from independent government watchdogs, routing it instead to a political appointee who had every incentive to make it disappear.

The documents, first reported by Just the News, reveal that an unnamed intelligence community whistleblower formally accused Fauci of providing false testimony to Congress about gain-of-function research funded by the National Institutes of Health at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Rather than send the complaint to the HHS Inspector General, the independent office responsible for investigating misconduct at Fauci's agency, then-DNI Avril Haines referred it to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Biden political appointee now running for governor of California.

The complaint never reached an impartial investigator. And Fauci went on to testify again before Congress in 2024, under oath, in a manner Gabbard says the newly released correspondence directly contradicts.

What the memos show

The core of the release centers on two documents. The first is a summary of a June 2021 meeting at the CIA attended by Fauci, in which evidence that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had fallen ill in fall 2019 was discussed. That meeting occurred just weeks after Fauci denied to Congress that NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, as the New York Post reported.

The CIA briefing summary records Fauci's own words at that meeting. He asked about the sick researchers: what their medical records showed, whether blood cultures existed, and whether China had been asked for the information. Those are not the questions of a man unfamiliar with the issue. They are the questions of someone already tracking the evidence.

The second document is a letter dated August 11, 2021, from Acting Intelligence Community Inspector General Tamara Johnson to DNI Haines. Johnson described the whistleblower complaint in blunt terms:

"The complaint alleges Dr. Fauci provided false testimony to Congress related to the conduct of gain of function research at the National Institutes of Health, thereby 'misleading the American people and Congressional oversight.'"

Johnson then explained why her office chose not to refer the complaint to the HHS Inspector General, the office actually empowered to investigate Fauci. Her reasoning deserves to be read carefully:

"The general dispute about 'gain-of-function' research is already in the public domain making it highly probable that the HHS-OIG would already be aware of the allegation that the Dr. Fauci's testimony was inaccurate (albeit from a different source, not our ICWPA submitter). Consequently, we determined there would be no merit in referring the matter to HHS OIG."

In plain English: because the topic was already in the news, there was no point sending a formal complaint to the people whose job it is to investigate formal complaints. That logic would excuse ignoring any whistleblower report about any scandal that had received media coverage. It is a standard that, if applied consistently, would render the inspector general system meaningless.

Fauci's 2024 testimony and the contradiction

The memos take on sharper significance in light of what happened three years later. In 2024, Fauci appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Under oath, he was asked repeatedly whether he had spoken to the FBI, CIA, DIA, or any U.S. intelligence agency about viral research before, during, or after the pandemic.

Gabbard stated that Fauci "repeatedly dodged the questions, before falsely stating, 'not to my knowledge about COVID.'" The CIA briefing summary from June 2021, the one Gabbard released, documents Fauci sitting in a meeting at the CIA, discussing evidence about sick Wuhan lab researchers. The gap between that documented meeting and Fauci's sworn testimony speaks for itself.

Gabbard did not hold back about what the documents reveal. In a statement accompanying the release, she said the pattern followed a familiar playbook, one that her office has worked to expose during her tenure as DNI:

"The tactics used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook: politicized self-serving leaders like Dr. Fauci covered up their own wrongdoing and abuses of power, manipulated intelligence, lied to Congress, and undermined a duly elected President by restricting his access to vital facts needed to keep the country safe."

She added: "It's time the American people learn the real story."

A wider pattern of suppression

The New York Post reported that internal communications showed Biden-era intelligence officials coordinated to protect Fauci. Top ODNI lawyer Christopher Fonzone updated draft letters to refer the complaint away from independent oversight and toward Becerra, the political appointee. That detail transforms the diversion from a passive bureaucratic error into something more deliberate, a conscious choice about who would, and who would not, scrutinize the complaint.

The Washington Examiner reported that the document release ran to hundreds of pages and included evidence that Fauci provided a list of virologists to intelligence agencies in June 2021 for their COVID origins investigation. That list included researchers with financial ties to Fauci's own agency, NIAID, and connections to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, among them Ralph Baric and Peter Daszak. In other words, Fauci helped select the experts who would evaluate whether Fauci's own funded research might have caused the pandemic.

The pattern of Biden-era intelligence officials burying inconvenient findings extends well beyond this case. Gabbard previously withdrew Biden-era intelligence assessments that had dismissed the Havana Syndrome threat, and the broader effort to clear out politically entrenched officials from the intelligence community has been a defining theme of the current administration.

Fox News reported that the declassified documents also revealed U.S. government funding for over 120 foreign biolabs in more than 30 countries conducting gain-of-function research with little oversight, a fact that contradicts years of Biden administration denials. Intelligence officials had even rejected Fauci as an outside reviewer of their COVID-19 origins assessment due to conflict-of-interest concerns, a judgment the documents now confirm was well-founded.

The pardon and the push for prosecution

Fauci retired before President Trump returned to the White House. But before leaving office, President Biden signed a pardon for Fauci in late 2024, reportedly using an autopen rather than his own hand. Fauci has repeatedly denied engaging in wrongdoing or lying to Congress.

The pardon has not settled the matter for congressional Republicans. Senators Rand Paul and Ron Johnson told Just the News this week that they believe the Trump Department of Justice should challenge the legality of Fauci's autopen pardon and pursue prosecution. The legal question of whether an autopen signature satisfies constitutional requirements for a presidential pardon remains untested, and no DOJ action on that front has been reported.

The use of declassified intelligence memos to expose alleged political bias within the federal bureaucracy has become a recurring feature of the current political landscape. Each new release adds another chapter to the same story: officials in positions of trust used their authority not to pursue the truth, but to manage it.

What remains unanswered

Several questions remain open. What, if anything, did Xavier Becerra do after receiving the whistleblower referral? Did his office investigate the complaint, file it, or simply let it die? No public record of any action has surfaced. The identity of the intelligence community whistleblower remains unknown, as does the full content of the original complaint beyond what Johnson quoted in her letter.

The specific congressional testimony the whistleblower alleged was false, which hearing, which date, which statements, is not detailed in the released documents. And the broader question of whether the ongoing effort to clear out Biden-era intelligence officials will produce further revelations about suppressed complaints or diverted investigations remains to be seen.

What the documents do establish is a clear sequence. An intelligence community whistleblower filed a complaint accusing the government's top pandemic official of lying to Congress. The complaint was received by the inspector general's office. The inspector general decided the matter did not merit referral to the independent watchdog with jurisdiction. The complaint was instead sent to a political appointee of the president whose administration Fauci served. And Fauci went on to testify again, under oath, in a manner the newly released CIA briefing summary appears to contradict.

That is not how the whistleblower system is supposed to work. It is how a system works when the people running it care more about protecting their own than protecting the public.