“April 22, 2020 — Interesting day — Rick Bright has gone rogue,” a little noticed entry from Anthony Fauci’s recently released diary proclaimed, with the disgraced former Covid czar then declaring Bright is “an abject LIAR!” For all the large-scale destruction Fauci wrought on society, this passing, overlooked entry exposes the depth of disregard this man had for anyone except himself.
Just one month ago, Sen. Rand Paul, Chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released a trove “meticulous notes” Fauci took while leading the public health response to Covid. The release of what the Kentucky senator branded “Tony’s Diary,” exceeded a thousand pages and reveals Fauci misrepresented key facts about Covid’s origins, the utility of masks and school closures, and the efficacy and safety of vaccines, including whether the shots were safe for pregnant women and their unborn children.
Beyond the science — and Fauci’s disregard thereof — Tony’s Diary exposed the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as an egomaniac of unbelievable proportions. Soon after Sen. Paul released Fauci’s transcribed-by-himself internal dialogue, The Federalist highlighted the most outrageous examples in “If You Thought Anthony Fauci Was An Egomaniac, Wait Until You Read His Covid Diary.” But the unnoticed entry from April 22, 2020 about Rick Bright showed Fauci’s infatuation with fame wasn’t the only thing he cared about: Fauci was the only thing Fauci cared about.
That late-April 2020 entry concerned Bright’s removal as the head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (“BARDA”) for “poor performance,” by the then-Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kadlec. Fauci added that “[w]e all had always felt that he was making bad decisions in his giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Phartma companies without any requirements to coordinate with NIH and his choices were poor to begin with.” But Fauci saw the decision to fire Bright by removing his name and picture from the HHS/BARDA website, a “botched HR move.”
Fauci then catalogued the fallout, noting that after Kadlec reassigned Bright to the National Institutes of Health, Bright “reacted by going public, hiring a lawyer, claiming whistleblower status and saying he was fired because he was pushing back against HHS and political pressure to fund bad science and certain companies and the he objected to pushing HC.” That didn’t happen, however, Fauci explained in his secret entry about Bright’s involvement in the research into “HC,” the antimalarial and anti-inflammatory drug hydroxychloroquine. “In fact, there are e-mails and memos showing that he himself was pushing HC and giving millions to get it out there. He is an abject LIAR!” Fauci concluded the entry.
So, as of April 22, 2020, the most famous man in the world on all things Covid — the man the press believed above all others — apparently viewed Bright’s whistleblower complaint as bogus. Yet Fauci said nothing publicly to defend Kadlec’s reputation against Bright’s accusations. Internally, Fauci also appears to have kept mum about Bright’s alleged “poor performance” and his assessment that Bright was an “abject LIAR!” as in early May 2020, Bright’s lawyers announced the Office of Special Counsel had “informed them it had determined there were ‘reasonable grounds’ to conclude that his reassignment from directing BARDA to managing COVID-19 testing at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was ‘retaliatory.’”
HHS attempted to counter with a detailed press statement entitled “Claim v. Reality,” which among other things stressed the same point Fauci highlighted in his Dear Diary entry: that “under Rick Bright’s leadership, BARDA identified chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as potential COVID-19 treatments. Rick Bright was the sponsor of getting hydroxychloroquine and praised his team for acquiring the drugs.” HHS also condemned Bright for “ransacking the good names of public health officials . . .”
Yet, Fauci said nothing, even after Bright began a media tour and repeated his accusations in congressional testimony. What followed, then, for Kadlec — a career officer in the United States Air Force, and a bronze star recipient for his service in Iraq — and others in BARDA, was a years-long investigation that remained ongoing until December 10, 2024. It was only then, after Trump had won his second term in office, that Hampton Dellinger, Special Counsel under the Biden Administration, released a letter adopting the HHS Office of Inspector General’s reports, concluding its findings appeared reasonable.
Those findings, sprinkled throughout three different reports and totally over some 70 pages rejected Bright’s claims that Kadlec engaged in gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority, or violated a law, rule, or regulation. And while the IG noted the distribution of donated HC to retail pharmacy posed a health risk from off-label use, the IG stressed that the HHS officials explained the donated HC were also distributed for FDA-approved uses to address the shortages of the drug, and thus rejected a claim of wrongdoing.
That Dellinger ratified the IG’s reports clearing Kadlec of that misconduct proves particularly noteworthy given that Kadlec was a Trump political appointee and Dellinger was so out-of-favor with the president, that less than two months later Trump would fire Dellinger. Dellinger would then sue for his job back, but after he appeared poised to lose, Dellinger dropped that lawsuit.
Absent from both Dellinger’s closing letter and the various IG reports is any hint that investigators had spoken with Fauci: While no names were listed in the final reports, titles and agencies were, and yet no mention was made of investigators interviewing anyone from either the National Institutes of Health, where Fauci worked at the relevant time, or speaking with the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, where Fauci served under the Biden Administration. That omission might not be that surprising because in Bright’s 63-page so-called whistleblower complaint, he provided a list of the who’s-who related to Covid, which included scores of government officials, including the then-NIH Director Francis Collins. Bright, however, excluded Fauci from the list.
While Kadlec and other BARDA staff were vindicated of the charges of gross mismanagement and waste of funds, abuse of authority, and of violating governing laws, rules, or regulation, in the end, they faced the stress and expense of undergoing an approximate five-years-long investigation, as well as suffering unfounded attacks on their reputation. Conversely, Bright, for his part, resigned in October of 2020 and then entered into a settlement agreement with HHS in or about August of 2021, according to his legal team at Katz Banks Kumin.
Michael Caputo, who was the then-Assistant Secretary of Health for Public Affairs, told The Federalist that he directed the administration’s response to “Bright’s media antics.” When asked about the matter, Caputo stated:
“In a public health bureaucracy infected with scientists leaking to sabotage President Trump, Rick Bright was a media fire hose. Many folks working for the President’s pandemic response would tell you few federal employees are more infamous for making COVID worse than Rick Bright.” Caputo added that “it’s especially disgusting because every single bogus accusation Bright made against Dr. Kadlec, a good and decent man, was dropped in the end as Bright secretly got rich off the taxpayer’s Judgement Fund.”
Bright did not respond to The Federalist’s requests for comment, and the law firm of Katz Banks Kumin, which represented Bright when he entered into the settlement agreement with the Biden Administration’s HHS, declined to comment. Accordingly, it is unknown how much and from where Bright was paid.
It seems likely, however, that had Fauci spoken out about his views concerning Bright’s “poor performance,” and “bad decisions,” and had the former Covid czar told investigators he viewed Bright as an “abject liar,” the settlement agreement wouldn’t have cost taxpayers as much money. And equally importantly, Kadlec would not have faced the cost and stress of defending himself for nearly five years.
It is often said that you can tell the character of a man by the way he treats his subordinates. And that Fauci sat silent while Bright launched his attacks on Kadlec and others is equally damning to the former Covid star as the more momentous misconduct the diary entries revealed — for Fauci’s other gambits at least held some benefit for him, either boosting his pride and fame or his pocketbook, or obscuring his complicity in gain-of-function research. But Fauci didn’t benefit from the attacks on Kadlec and the BARDA team, so the only reason for the former NIH Director to stay on the sidelines was because Fauci just didn’t care about anyone, but himself.
