Did you catch this in the released journals of Tony Fauci?
Everyone remembers the 2020 argument about an “October surprise” vaccine — the worry that Donald Trump would force an emergency authorization out of the FDA in time to help him win. What we didn’t have, until now, was Fauci’s own contemporaneous account of what he did about it.
His diary has it. Across five months, he tracks the pressure campaign, names the people applying it, and records the moment he picked up the phone and told the FDA official who would have to sign the authorization that he had his back if he refused.
Who’s who in these entries
Peter Marks -Director of the FDA center that reviews vaccines. The authorization would go through him.
Stephen Hahn - FDA Commissioner, Marks’s boss. Fauci repeatedly worries he will “cave.”
Mark Meadows - White House Chief of Staff.
Alex Azar - Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Larry Horowitz - Works closely with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He is Fauci’s source, again and again.
Francis Collins & Cliff Lane - NIH Director and Fauci’s deputy at NIAID. They make the call to Marks with him.
June 20, 2020 “I may need to blow the whistle on her”
It starts earlier than you’d think, and it starts with Deborah Birx — not the White House political staff.
Fauci writes that he is “getting progressively disillusioned” with the White House coronavirus response coordinator. His complaint is that she wants to skip the clinical trials and move straight to emergency authorizations:
Deb has ststed [sic] that we should noit [sic] do clinical trials since “I want to see every infected person in a nursing home get plasma early on and steroids later. Forget the trial, we need to do this on EUAs. She says the same thing about vaccine trials. Clearly, she is trying to provide Trump with his October surprise. I may need to blow the whistle on her.Diary, June 20, 2020 — released package p. 212
Note what this is: five months before the election, Fauci has already framed the acceleration of vaccine approval as an election play, and has already contemplated going public to stop it.
Late July 2020 - The tip-off from the Speaker’s office
By late July, Fauci is recording the same worry about Meadows. On July 26 he watches the chief of staff on television and writes that it is “his way of backing out of a failure and trying to get an ‘October Surprise’… Heads up for him trying to push an early approval of vaccine.”
The next day, July 27, Fauci is in the Oval Office briefing Trump on therapeutics and vaccines. His note is almost sympathetic: Trump “accepted that the vaccine might not be ready before the election, but he was not happy about it.”
Then, on July 31, comes the entry that changes the picture. Fauci’s information does not come from inside the administration he serves. It comes from Nancy Pelosi’s office:
Important call form [sic] Larry Horowitz who works closely with nancy Pelosi. Apparently, There was a meeting in the WH with Steve Mnuchin, Mark Meadows, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schummer. Steve and Mark told Nancy and Chuck that AstraZeneca will have vaccine in September and that it will be given an EUA… Apparently, Peter Marks does not know anything about this and Larry just informed him. Bottom line is that they are going to pressure Steve Han [sic] (who likely will cave in in the idea of an EUA) to issue one even though Peter has serius [sic] issues with this. An EUA will likely get in the way of completing the RCTs that are going on. Clearly. This is politically driven and will be a ploy for Trump to get re-elected.Diary, July 31, 2020 — released package p. 267
Read that middle sentence again. The FDA’s top vaccine regulator did not know the White House was planning to authorize a vaccine in September. He found out because a Pelosi aide told him. The political positioning here on both sides is crazy.
August 7, 2020 - The phone call
A week later, Fauci records what he did with the information. This is the entry the whole story turns on:
Call from Larry Horowitz (works with Nancy Pelosi)… He had warned me a few days ago about Meadows trying to pressure Hahn and Marks to grant UA [sic — EUA] (or even BLA) prematurely to vaccines (likely AZ) in time for the election. I called Peter Marks a couple of days ago (together with Collins and Lane) and explained that we would back him if he holds the line. He called the AZ package “a hot mess” and definitely not in shape for an EUADiary, August 7, 2020 — released package p. 274
Three of the most senior scientists in the federal government — the NIAID director, the NIH director, and Fauci’s own deputy — telephoned the regulator who would sign the authorization and told him they would back him if he held out.
Fauci’s justification is on the page and it is (he claims) a scientific one. Marks called the AstraZeneca submission “a hot mess.” An early authorization, Fauci had written a week earlier, “will likely get in the way of completing the RCTs that are going on.” Whether you find that persuasive is the whole argument. But the intervention itself is no longer in dispute. He wrote it down.
The pattern repeats through August. On the 8th, Horowitz flags that an FDA official needs support against a hydroxychloroquine authorization being pushed by Peter Navarro — and that Hahn told her to hold her decision so he could “speak with Meadows.”
On the 24th, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla calls Fauci, worried AstraZeneca will get an authorization before the other companies finish their trials. On the 26th, after the FDA authorizes convalescent plasma, Fauci writes that Hahn “likely caved to Meadows. Who is looking for good news before the election.”
October 29, 2020 - Five days out
With the election five days away, the fight moves to monoclonal antibody drugs from Lilly and Regeneron. Fauci flags the entry himself, in red ink, in his own journal:
Some potentially nefarious stuff going on. The FDA career scientists are hesitant to grant EUAs to Lilly’s and Regeneron’s mAb based on the current data. Alex Azar is really pushing them and furious because he thinks FDA is “slow-walking” the process so as not to have it out before the election in 5 days. Clearly, Alex wants to please the POTUS so that they can say that they have a breakthrough… right before the election… We encouraged Francis to support the career scientists at FDA since they do not want to rush this through. They need more time to gather important information since what they have now is rather weak. Diary, October 29, 2020 — released package p. 432
Same shape as August: the administration pushes to get something announced before the vote, and Fauci works the other way, encouraging the NIH director to stiffen the FDA’s resistance.
November 21, 2020 - The accusation lands
Trump lost. Pfizer announced its 95% efficacy result on November 9 — six days after Election Day. And a little over two weeks later, the same back-channel that had been feeding Fauci information all summer delivered the other side’s verdict:
Got call from Larry Horowitz tonight telling me that Peter Marks told him that Trump called up Steve Hahn today and told him that Alex Azar said that Steve lost the POTUS the election by holding up the news about the Pfizer vaccine. Trump was cursing Steve on the phone and then hung up. Steve did not know if he was going to get fired and told this to Peter who called up Larry. Still not sure what is going to happen. Diary, November 21, 2020 — released package p. 488
There is one more entry worth noting. On November 9, the day Pfizer’s result was announced, Fauci wrote that he was “surprised that there was not even a hint in Pence’s voice that declaring the vaccine successful a few days AFTER the election was a conspiracy of some sort. I have not even heard any of that from the Oval Office.”
He was waiting for the accusation. It arrived twelve days later, and it was aimed at Stephen Hahn.
What the record does establish, in his own hand: Fauci personally intervened with the FDA’s top vaccine regulator to encourage him to resist a pre-election authorization, and his intelligence on White House vaccine plans ran repeatedly through the office of the Speaker of the House — on July 31, August 7, August 8, and again in November.