President Donald Trump has reportedly pulled the security detail of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former public official who faced death threats for guiding the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sources familiar with Trump’s decision shared the news with CNN and The New York Times on Friday, noting that Fauci’s security detail was not provided by the Secret Service, but rather by federal marshals, and later by a private contractor paid by the federal government.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under seven presidents, shared during the height of the pandemic that he’d received “serious threats” to himself, his wife and his daughters because of his public-facing role advising Trump on his response to the disease outbreak.
In 2022, a West Virginia man was sentenced to three years in prison for sending threatening messages to Fauci and other officials, including one telling the scientist he would be “hunted, captured, tortured and killed.”
Fauci shared last year that those threats continue to come in whenever Republican lawmakers or conservative media personalities attack him for his work. He pointed to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) saying on the House floor that he should be “prosecuted for ‘crimes against humanity’” as an example.
“When you have performances like that unusual performance by Marjorie Taylor Greene in today’s hearing, those are the kinds of things that drive up the death threats because there are a segment of the population out there that believe that kind of nonsense,” Fauci said in a CNN interview last spring.
Despite that, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) demanded this week that the government withdraw funding for Fauci’s security detail, characterizing it as “24 hr a day limo and security detail” on social media.
“I wish him nothing but peace but he needs to pay for his own limos,” Paul wrote Thursday.
Trump, who’s vowed retribution against his political enemies, has publicly sparred with Fauci.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” Trump said in 2020.
In his memoir published last year, Fauci said Trump would yell at him while also telling him he loved him. He recalled one chaotic conversation with the president after saying the COVID-19 vaccine was unlikely to provide lifetime protection and would likely require regular boosters.
“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him. He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse,” Fauci recalled, adding that Trump’s comments to him were often laden with expletives.
Go Ad-Free — And Protect The Free Press
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Former President Joe Bidenpreemptively pardoned Fauci before leaving office this week to protect him from potential “revenge” by Trump.