by Debra Heinie
Dr. Anthony Fauci has received $15,000,000 in taxpayer-funded security services since leaving his post as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Government Watchdog, Open the Books, has found.
The secret, unprecedented arrangement was discovered within a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the U.S. Marshals service and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) via a Freedom of Information Act request issued by the watchdog.
According to the MOU, the security funding was available from January 4, 2023-September 20, 2024, with the option of being extended, although it’s not clear that it was.
Fauci, 83, reigned as director of NIAID for 38 years, from November 2, 1984 to December 31, 2022, finally stepping down after being accused of back-channeling funding of gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology ahead of the COVID-19 outbreak.
According to the Dossier’s Jordan Schachtel, the memo shows that in addition to a fully staffed U.S. Marshals security detail, American taxpayers were also on the hook for Fauci’s chauffeur.
Specifically, the $15 million covered:
– Salaries and benefits for deputies and administrative personnel assigned to Fauci’s protective detail
– Costs related to transporting Fauci
– Law enforcement equipment
During the height of the COVID pandemic, Fauci was feted in the media as the world’s foremost “public health expert” and even referred to himself as the very embodiment of “science.” But by October of 2021, a majority of Americans believed he should resign.
Fauci fall from grace came after it became clear that the Wuhan Lab was the origin of the virus.
Additionally, Americans had increasingly come to resent, as the Dossier put it, the “years-long draconian restrictions upon the American people, which devastated the fabric of U.S. society, greatly harmed the economy and caused all kinds of additional negative repercussions – including widespread learning loss among America’s youth.”
Fauci was never shy to advocate for lockdowns, social distancing, school closures, business closures, mask mandates, and vaccine passports from his powerful federal perch during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci retired from the federal bureaucracy as the highest paid government employee, with a stunning $480,654 salary.
In 2022 Open the Books estimated his pension would be about $355,000 per year, adding to the considerable fortune of $11 million amassed over his 54 years of government service. The President of the United States makes $400,000 per year. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts made $312,200 in 2023.
Since retiring from the NIAID in December 2022, Dr. Fauci published a memoir and accepted a quasi-ceremonial dual-professorship at Georgetown University. He holds the newfound title of Distinguished University Professor in the School of Medicine and is also affiliated with Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy. The longtime NIAID chief has yet to teach a class at the university.
The Dossier and Open the Books reported that they could find no other cases of a former federal employee receiving this level of protection. The U.S. Marshals Service, they noted, is usually “tasked with capturing fugitives and protecting judges and court witnesses.”
Fauci received this unique protection from the Marshals Service, even amid budget constraints that resulted in the agency failing to meet its essential duties, according to the Dossier.
The tragic assassination of a judge’s son in 2020 led to an Inspector General report finding “resource limitations and competing agency budget and staffing priorities” have prevented the agency from providing optimal protection to the nation’s judiciary. The agency’s Fiscal Year 2025 Congressional Budget Request asked for $28.1 million in additional funds to better protect the nation’s judges, according to Reuters.
As the Dossier points out, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was denied Secret Service protection six times during the course of his independent political campaign.
The campaign spent $3 million on private security. He was finally granted protection shortly after the failed attempt on President Trump’s life in July, which was swiftly withdrawn again after he dropped out of the race in August. Kennedy is a person of some means, but he appears to have received much less favorable treatment than Dr. Fauci.
Fauci has argued in media interviews that his security detail is necessary due to threats he has received from what he described as the “extreme radical right.”
Kennedy, on the other hand, was denied security, despite receiving 34 separate threats, according to FOIA’d documents, including a text message that read, “How about you f*** off or I’ll come to your event and shoot every single person who attends… Execution style and i’ll broadcast the entire shooting on live TV.” [sic]
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Debra Heine reports for American Greatness.
