The Trump administration has managed to retrieve a cell phone and hard drives that were used by Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic, as disclosed by the president’s chief of the FBI.

In the most recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, FBI director Kash Patel announced that there had been a “significant breakthrough” in the government’s investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and how the US responded to it.

According to Patel, investigators had faced difficulties in finding the devices Fauci used while serving as the chief White House medical advisor during the pandemic. These devices could offer valuable information about important decisions made on strategies such as lockdowns and mask mandates, as well as Fauci’s former department’s potential connections to the controversial Chinese laboratory linked to the lab leak theory.

During the podcast, which saw Patel share a cigar with Rogan and talk about UFOs, the intelligence chief told Rogan the FBI had retrieved a cell phone and hard drives mere days before the podcast was filmed. 

It is unclear exactly when the phone was used and how they verified it belonged to Fauci. Patel did not specify how they seized it or what the team’s ‘multiple investigations’ thus far on the origins of Covid have found. 

He also cautioned Americans ‘shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that everything’s in there’ and that incriminating data could have been deleted. 

However, he called the bombshell ‘a victory for the American people’ and said his team is immediately working to comb through any data on the device. 

Patel said: ‘We found it, and at least we can tell the American people we’ve been looking because it is of public importance to figure out, did that guy lie? 

‘Did he intentionally mislead the world and cause countless deaths?

‘We owe those answers to the American people, and the best evidence ever is always the people’s evidence who created it. So now we’re going to go and exploit those hard drives.’ 

‘We did find it [the cell phone], we’re not done, we’re still looking and we’re on the case.’

Patel did not specify how his team got the old phone or how they verified it was Fauci’s. Generally, a warrant is required to seize a cell phone, even for a government official. 

There are no publicly available warrants out against Fauci currently.  

The FBI and CIA have both asserted they think Covid most likely originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, which was conducting risky experiments on coronaviruses in the years leading up to the pandemic.

Some of those experiments were funded by US taxpayer money through grants awarded by Dr Fauci’s old department, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Dr Fauci, once seen as an ‘adult in the room’ amid a chaotic and confusing government response to the initial 2020 outbreak, has seen his sparkling public image take a hit in recent years.

He flip-flopped on crucial Covid safety information including masks and worked to silence scientists with views that differed from the mainstream.

Leaked emails show that in early 2020, he commissioned a paper denouncing the theory as a conspiracy, then publicized the study at a White House news conference weeks later without disclosing his involvement.

He and other public health experts also publicly dismissed the lab leak – with Dr Fauci saying in June 2021 that it was ‘a very, very, very, very remote possibility.’

It later emerged that, as the head of the NIAID, he presided over the allocation of taxpayer-funded grants for virus-enhancing research at the WIV years before the pandemic began.

A federal watchdog found the NIH ‘did not effectively monitor’ those experiments or check whether they involved pathogens with pandemic risk.

Dr Fauci also privately expressed concern the virus may have been the product of a research accident. 

Internationally, other intelligence agencies have also supported the lab-leak theory. 

The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) carried out a secret investigation into the origins of Covid nicknamed Project Saaremaa during the pandemic, sharing the findings with the US in December 2024. 

Investigators found unpublished dissertations from 2019 and 2020 that allegedly discussed the effects of coronaviruses on the human body.

Additionally, uncovered materials revealed Chinese scientists had ‘an unusually large amount of knowledge about the supposedly novel virus available at an unusually early stage.’

Based on the materials BND agents found and analyzed, they used a ‘Probability Index’ to measure the reliability of information, which determined the lab-leak theory was ‘probable’ with an ’80 to 95 percent’ certainty.

Robert Redfield, former CDC director when the pandemic erupted, also accused American and British health agencies of shutting down concerns over potential lab leaks. 

The previously told DailyMail.com he is ‘100 percent’ convinced Covid was the result of scientists becoming infected while carrying out high-risk experiments to boost the infectivity of bat viruses amid low biosecurity in Wuhan labs.  

Fauci has denied all accusations of Covid being ‘covered up’ or originating from a lab. In 2024, he told a US House panel that he had not suppressed lab leak theories or influenced research to discredit it. 

He has also called accusations that he covered it up ‘preposterous.’ 

Patel said: ‘My mission has always been to put out the truth, whatever the consequences, whoever it’s against.