Dr. Anthony Fauci hired David Schertler to help him navigate what’s likely to be a long legal battle, as congressional Republicans are trying to hold him accountable for his actions during the COVID pandemic. We all suspected he was pushing science fiction — the diary entries found and released publicly from the HHS servers reveal an egomaniac. He admits it, and when egos are stroked, bad things happen. It’s gotten to the point where even staunch liberals, like Bill Maher, are criticizing Fauci for giving in to brown-nosing, which led to poor decisions, such as keeping kids out of school when it was soon clear they were not the main spreaders. 

On July 29, Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where he delivered prepared remarks and invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times. It was a terrible look for Mr. "I have nothing to hide." Fauci has publicly stated he enjoys testifying before Congress — so what went wrong? Everyone knows: those diary entries shattered his entire persona and reputation. Therefore, even if the Justice Department doesn’t pursue the contempt resolution for Fauci refusing to answer questions, the legal process — and a costly one at that — serves as punishment. His reputation being shredded clearly bothers the political class.

Yet, the iPhone is a major development, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) revealed that his committee has a copy, will review it, and will try to release it jointly in concert with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). He spoke about it with Laura Ingraham last Thursday:

SENATOR JOHNSON: “No, we’re downloading the phone right now.”

LAURA INGRAHAM: “What can you tell us about what you have learned thus far?”

SENATOR JOHNSON: “From the phone, not much because we’re downloading it and trying to do it the right way. We want to preserve the evidence.”

“I can tell you that what we have looked at, it predates the pandemic, so that’s good.”

“The way we’re going to use it, obviously, we’ll compare key moments, see who he was texting.”

“We’ll compare what we see on the phone to other FOIA requests where he provided texts.”

“Did he provide all the texts?”

“We know, obviously, his henchman, David Morens… showed him how to delete emails, or remove them, and so, it might be a treasure trove.”

“I think the diaries certainly were. They showed Fauci for the complete phony that he was.”

Teri Chistoph wrote about this at RedState over the weekend, noting that Fauci had only three contacts on that device. As with anything regarding congressional investigations, Johnson did warn that the timetable could be long, as there are also over 500 voicemails and 34,000 texts to review:

Johnson appeared on the Friday night edition of NewsNation's Katie Pavlich Tonight to reveal that there are some incredibly odd things on the doctor's phone. Independent journalist Catherine Herridge, who attended the Fauci hearing, was sitting in for Katie; she had teased earlier in the night that Johnson had some important news to share.

While Johnson wasn't ready to get into the weeds about what they're finding, he did reveal that they have a good deal of information to work with, including over 34,000 texts and 533 voicemails.

Johnson told Herridge that there was a treasure trove of information on the phone, which Fauci is believed to have used from 2014 up until a few days before he left the National Institutes of Health in December of 2022. 

Just three contacts on the entire phone — yeah, okay, man. 

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