Fauci savored the power that came with his fame. About a month before the Washington Post profile, Fauci recounted phone calls with the offices of New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In both instances, Fauci bragged about how, based on his advice, the Democratic governments in those jurisdictions closed schools, bars, and restaurants.

The diary also details cozy relationships with some of the biggest names in the news business, whom Fauci used to create his own narrative about the virus, and to attack critics who were more accurate about the higher costs and lower benefits that he later admitted to in the public health policies he was pushing. CNN’s Jake Tapper, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, and late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel all make fawning appearances.

The diary brings to light new lies told by Fauci about the virus to add to a long-established list, including: the efficacy of masks, the efficacy of social distancing, and the efficacy of the vaccines the Biden administration was pushing on the public.

Now, thanks to the diary, we know Fauci vastly oversold the lethality of the virus in public after admitting in private that it was similar to the common flu.

“[Former CDC Director] Tom Frieden called me this AM and we discussed various aspects of the outbreak,” Fauci wrote on Feb. 8, 2020. “He and I are on the same page in thinking that this is acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility and that the denominator is much greater than 34,867 making the case fatality rate more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.”

But a month later, on March 11, 2020, Fauci testified to Congress that the mortality rate was “around one percent, which means it is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.”

Nowhere has Fauci been more dishonest than on the issue of the origins of the virus, a subject on which he and Paul clashed many times. It will be the main subject at Wednesday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing.

The diary entries show Fauci hosted a call with 12 epidemiologists on Feb. 1, 2020, to discuss the likelihood that the virus had been man-made and then released by accident from a lab in Wuhan, China. Fauci’s contemporaneous notes show that 10 of the 12 scientists believed the virus must be man-made. The only two who disagreed had ties to Wuhan that would prove to be embarrassing if it were shown the virus had originated from there.

We already knew Fauci helped oversee federal funding that supported risky coronavirus research in Wuhan that may have contributed to the creation of the virus that caused the pandemic. We also knew he used his immense authority to obscure that possibility and promote the natural-origin theory. He misled the world about masks, defended social-distancing rules that lacked a scientific basis, and overstated what COVID vaccines could do to prevent infection and transmission.

HOW MANY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT VOTES IS TOO MANY?

Now, Fauci’s own diaries reinforce the portrait of an official who, at every turn, sought to protect and enhance his reputation, conceal his mistakes, and cultivate flattering media coverage. Far from the disinterested public servant he presented himself to be, Fauci used his status as the nation’s leading health expert to evade accountability and pump up an ego inflated by fame.

Wednesday’s hearing must be about more than settling an old score between Paul and Fauci. Congress must determine how one unelected official accumulated enough power to shut down a nation, suppress competing scientific judgments, and shield himself from accountability. The country cannot undo the damage, but it can ensure no public health official ever wields such power again.