CNN Panelist Claims Network Wouldn’t Air Fauci Diary Release

A regular CNN NewsNight contributor accused the network of avoiding discussion of newly released private diary entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci, posting the criticism on social media shortly after Tuesday night’s broadcast wrapped. Conservative columnist Lydia Moynihan made the claim on X less than an hour after host Abby Phillip cut her off when she briefly raised the disclosure during the program. The panel had been discussing whether recent changes to government website listings for U.S. troops killed in the Iran war amounted to “purposeful obfuscation,” a question Moynihan said on air “remains to be seen.” The 31-year-old New York Post writer said she wanted clearer answers about why listings for four service members killed earlier this month had reportedly been altered in recent days to say they died “overseas” rather than in the war. “I think we need to have transparency around what’s going on,” Moynihan told the table before shifting to another example. “I think one situation that frankly where we saw the government was certainly obfuscating, didn’t have any transparency, was Anthony Fauci.” The mention drew an immediate reaction from the panel as Moynihan referred to thousands of pages of Fauci’s pandemic-era diary entries released over the weekend.

The entries, spanning late 2019 through Fauci’s 2022 retirement, depict the longtime infectious disease official tracking media coverage, celebrity attention and communications with journalists, including CNN anchors Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. “He was purposely obfuscating about the origins of-” Moynihan began, before objections from other guests overtook her remarks. “I mean, this is like, are you serious now?” asked Isaiah Martin, a former Texas congressional candidate, noting that some of the diary entries were “six years old.” Moynihan tried again, saying, “Where he was purposely obfuscating about-,” as she appeared to reference claims from congressional and Senate Republicans about COVID-19’s origins and Fauci’s alleged approval of funding connected to laboratories in China where researchers have worked with dangerous viruses.

The diary material was released ahead of a Wednesday hearing by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where Fauci is set to testify about the federal government’s response to the pandemic. The origins of COVID-19, which emerged in late 2019, remain the subject of two leading theories: a laboratory-related incident or natural zoonotic transmission, in which the virus moved from animals to humans. Fauci publicly played down the lab-leak theory early in the pandemic, when critics of the theory argued it fueled racist sentiment; according to the released diary material and those highlighting it, he privately entertained the possibility more seriously.

Fauci has not been charged with any crimes. Phillip quickly stopped the exchange from moving further in that direction. “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 added, with Martin agreeing. Moynihan continued to argue that the two subjects shared a broader theme of transparency, but Phillip moved the segment on. At 12:03 a.m., Moynihan renewed her criticism on X, attaching video of the on-air moment.

“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,” Moynihan wrote. The diary entries were released by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul and include Fauci’s reflections on the origins of the disease, along with repeated references to his growing public profile across roughly 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,” Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wrote in March 2020. Within weeks, he noted a “big front page article abut [sic] me appeared in the Washington Post.” By May 2020, Fauci wrote: “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 added: “Very flattering.” Two days later, he wondered 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.” Fauci described the situation as “very stressful!!” Other entries show him continuing to monitor commentary about himself and developing what he characterized as a “friendship” with Tapper, who in April 2020 checked in to ask whether an interview they had recently done had created any problems for the government official. The diaries also indicate Fauci visited Tapper’s Washington, DC, home for dinner at least twice. The entries further show that Bash privately texted Fauci after his heated exchange with Republican Rep. Jim Jordan during an April 2021 hearing on the federal pandemic response. Bash, who had called Fauci a “superhero” during a December 2020 interview, offered encouragement on behalf of herself and Wolf Blitzer, saying Blitzer had joked that Fauci would not have been blamed if he had told Jordan to “go [EXPLETIVE] yourself.” “I just watched the whole Jordan thing. Again, you’re a better man than I,” Bash wrote. The following day, she texted again, this time pointing him to a vulgar Vanity Fair headline that also mocked Jordan’s performance at the subcommittee hearing.

Fauci received a “full and unconditional” pardon from then-President Joe Biden at the end of Biden’s time in office, covering any prospective federal offenses he “may have committed or taken part in” from January 1, 2014, through the date of the pardon. Paul, who chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, has accused Fauci of misleading Congress about federal government activities before and during the early spread of COVID-19. The Daily Mail has contacted CNN for comment. Moynihan began appearing on NewsNight in 2024 and is also a regular contributor on Fox News and CNBC.