Sen. Ron Johnson is accusing career Health and Human Services employees of hindering the Fauci iPhone probe as Senate investigators press for more pandemic-era records from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s old government phone. The Wisconsin Republican said longtime staff inside HHS are putting up barriers not only to his work, but also to efforts backed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to uncover what the agency still holds from the COVID-19 period.
Johnson told Fox News Digital that neither he nor Kennedy fully knows what remains inside the department’s files. “Again, we don't know what we don’t know,” he said. “We don't know what HHS has. Bobby Kennedy doesn't know what HHS has.” Johnson argued that those unanswered questions are part of what makes the Fauci iPhone probe so important.
The senator, along with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, received a copy of Fauci’s personal work phone from HHS as part of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s investigation into the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. On Monday, Johnson’s panel, the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released the first set of private messages recovered from the device. That batch included more than 34,000 text messages and 522 voicemails.
Among the messages were exchanges between Fauci and former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Dr. Vivek Murthy, who later became surgeon general under the Biden administration. One message showed Fauci raising concerns about whether side effects after a second dose of mRNA vaccines could have an effect on pregnant women in the first trimester. Fauci wrote that many people were experiencing significant cytokine storms and fevers after the second dose, which he said could “theoretically” be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester.
Johnson said the newly released texts may be only the beginning of what investigators could find. He also said he is proceeding carefully because additional records may include personal information belonging to other people named in the communications. Still, he said the material matters because of the stakes involved in public health and informed consent. In his view, Fauci’s concern “immediately impacts public safety, immediately impacts informed consent.”
