House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, just revealed that former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra's department deliberately withheld Dr. Anthony Fauci's personal pandemic diary from congressional investigators. Not lost it. Not delayed it. Intentionally withheld it.
They also kept his government cellphone.
"When we first began the investigation of Dr. Fauci, we subpoenaed all documentation from Becerra, 100% of everything that they had on Dr. Fauci," Comer told Newsmax on August 24. "Now, we know they intentionally withheld the diary."
The subpoena went out in 2023. HHS had years to comply. Instead, Becerra's department sat on the two items most likely to contain unfiltered, real-time documentation of what Fauci knew about COVID-19's origins and when he knew it. A personal diary and a government-issued phone — the kind of records that can't be scrubbed after the fact by a communications team.
Comer's accusation gets sharper when you pair it with what he said about Fauci's internal behavior. According to the chairman, Fauci "told his subordinates not to put anything in email because he didn't want a paper chain." So the official channels were deliberately kept clean. Which makes the diary and the phone the only records where Fauci's unguarded thinking might actually exist. And those are precisely the items HHS chose to hide.
Fauci's lawyer, David Schertler, has characterized the investigations as his client "facing an unprecedented legal barrage for a retired civil servant." An interesting framing. Most retired civil servants don't invoke the Fifth Amendment over 100 times during Senate testimony, which is what Fauci did in July. That's not the behavior of a man with nothing to hide. That's the behavior of a man whose lawyer told him to stop talking.
Comer has given Becerra until September 2 to respond to a formal letter demanding answers about the withheld materials. Becerra — who is now running for governor of California — has every incentive to stall. A diary that documents what Fauci actually knew about the Wuhan lab and gain-of-function research isn't the kind of thing a Democratic gubernatorial candidate wants surfacing in a news cycle.
Meanwhile, the legal pressure on Fauci is coming from multiple directions. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey, and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill are all pursuing state-level investigations. Fauci received a presidential pardon that shields him from federal prosecution, but state attorneys general operate outside that umbrella.
The pattern is consistent. Official emails were kept vague on purpose. Senate testimony was Fifth Amendment from start to finish. And the one document where Fauci might have written down what he actually thought — his personal diary — was hidden from the committee that subpoenaed it three years ago.
A man who wanted transparency wouldn't need a pardon, a Fifth Amendment strategy, and a cabinet secretary willing to defy a congressional subpoena to keep his notebook in a drawer.