A regular face on CNN NewsNight turned to social media Tuesday night, accusing the network of sidestepping newly released private diary entries belonging to Dr. Anthony Fauci shortly after the program wrapped.
Conservative commentator and New York Post columnist Lydia Moynihan posted the allegation on X roughly an hour after host Abby Phillip interrupted her when she briefly referenced the document release during the live panel discussion.
The exchange unfolded as panelists were discussing whether recent changes to government web pages listing Iran war casualties amounted to “purposeful obfuscation” — a possibility Moynihan said on air still “remains to be seen.”
Moynihan, 31, said she wanted clearer answers after listings for four service members killed earlier this month were reportedly altered in recent days, changing language that identified them as dying in the war to a broader description saying they died “overseas.”
“I think we need to have transparency around what’s going on,” Moynihan told the CNN panel before shifting to another example she said raised similar concerns.
“I think one situation that frankly where we saw the government was certainly obfuscating, didn’t have any transparency, was Anthony Fauci,” she said.
Her mention of Fauci appeared to unsettle others at the table, coming just days after thousands of pages of pandemic-era diary entries were made public over the weekend.
The records, covering the period from late 2019 through Fauci’s 2022 retirement, offered a window into his attention to media coverage and celebrity supporters, along with frequent cordial exchanges with journalists including CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper.
Frequent CNN NewsNight panelist Lydia Moynihan clashed with the show’s host, Abby Phillip, on Monday after saying that private, pandemic-era diary entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci could show purposeful obfuscation that had been at play a the time
The diary entries were released as Fauci faces claims from Republicans that he signed off on funding for laboratories in China where workers manipulated viruses and misled Congress about the government’s pandemic response
‘He was purposely obfuscating about the origins of-‘ Moynihan began, before being drowned out by the other guests’ disapproval.
‘I mean, this is like, are you serious now?’ asked former Texas Congressional candidate Isaiah Martin, pointing out how some of the entries were ‘six years old.’
‘Where he was purposely obfuscating about-‘
Moynihan cut in to point to past claims from Congressional and Senate Republicans concerning COVID-19’s origins and Fauci allegedly signing off funding for laboratories in China where workers have manipulated dangerous viruses.
The diary entries were released ahead of a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing where Fauci will testify about the federal government’s pandemic response on Wednesday.
The emergence of COVID-19 in late 2019 is the subject of two main theories – one being a laboratory-related incident and the other natural zoonotic transmission, meaning the virus’s spread started from an animal to person.
Fauci played down the lab leak theory at the start of the pandemic, amid woke howls that it was racist – but privately conceded it was likely, according to his diaries.
Fauci has not been charged with any crimes.
Phillip promptly shut the conversation down.
Moynihan was roundly criticized for the remark, which was offered up during a conversation about potential ‘obfuscation’ from the current administration when it comes to Iran war casualty counts
‘We’re sitting here talking about Americans who were killed in theater, okay, as a result of a war. We are not going to pivot to Anthony Fauci’s diaries,’ she said.
‘That’s a different conversation,’ Phillip maintained, as Martin agreed.
Moynihan, however, still pushed back – first on-air by highlighting the two situations’ similarities.
Phillip flouted the attempt by merely moving on.
At 12:03am, Moynihan tried again, this time with footage of the aforementioned exchange attached in a pointed X post.
‘I wish the media would devote even just a minute or two to acknowledging Anthony Fauci’s lies and obfuscation instead of focusing relentlessly on the Pentagon website,’ she wrote.
The diary entries were released by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul and show Fauci reflecting on the disease’s origins.
After being shut down by Phillip on-air, the New York Post staffer took to X to shame CNN
They also appear to show the doctor becoming increasingly infatuated with his newfound celebrity over the course of some 1,100 pages.
‘Press is going wild with me. Front page in Washintgton [sic] Post yesterday and Op Ed by Maureen Dowd in NY Times today about me and my relationship with the POTUS. Profile by Peter Nicholas on me in The Atlantic,’ the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases wrote in March 2020.
Within a few weeks, Fauci was fawning over a ‘big front page article abut [sic] me appeared in the Washington Post.’
‘It is not hyoperbole[sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable person in the world,’ he wrote in May 2020.
‘Very flattering,’
Two days later, Fauci pondered whether he was ‘putting down the POTUS and becoming a star that outshines him. The press is playing into this as is the tweet storm.’ He framed the dynamic as ‘very stressful!!’
Other entries showed Fauci’s continuing to keep tabs on what was said about him, while even striking up what he saw as a ‘friendship’ with Tapper, who in April 2020 checked in with the government official to ensure an interview the two had done just days before hadn’t caused him any problems.
Fauci also visited the Tapper home in Washington, DC, for dinner at least twice, other entries show.
Stars like Dana Bash and Jake Tapper were named in the Fauci entries following friendly exchanges with the now-85-year-old former government official
They also revealed how CNN’s Bash privately texted Fauci following his heated clash with Republican Rep. Jim Jordan during a hearing about the federal government’s pandemic response in April 2021.
The State of the Union host – who hailed Fauci as a ‘superhero’ when he joined her for an interview in December 2020 – offered words of encouragement on behalf of herself and costar Wolf Blitzer, whom Bash said joked that Fauci wouldn’t have been blamed if he had told Jordan to ‘go f*** yourself.’
‘I just watched the whole Jordan thing. Again, you’re a better man than I,’ Bash also wrote.
The next day, Bash texted again – this time to highlight a vulgar Vanity Fair headline that also mocked Jordan’s subcommittee performance.
Fauci received a full pardon from then-President Joe Biden for any prospective crime at the end of the latter’s tenure in office.
The ‘full and unconditional’ pardon cleared the former White House medical advisor for ‘any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014’ through the date of the pardon.
Paul, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, has alleged that Fauci misled Congress on the federal government’s activities before and during the virus’s initial spread.
The Daily Mail has approached CNN for comment. Moynihan began appearing on NewsNight in 2024. She is also a regular on Fox News and CNBC.
