In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s hearing, Paul has released thousands of pages of documents on his “Reading Room” website linking Fauci to an alleged cover-up of the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Paul has released hundreds of pages of email correspondence implicating Fauci in swaying the intelligence community from investigating U.S. government-backed research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China that could have sparked the pandemic.

The document dump also includes more than 1,500 pages of diary entries from Fauci documenting his role in public health policy for more than 20 years, beginning in 2001. The files were stored on Department of Health and Human Services servers and given to Paul and his Senate colleagues last week, according to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The diary entries, in particular, give a glimpse into Fauci’s private doubts in the early stages of the pandemic that the virus could have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, which contradicted his public statements at the time.

Speculation and suspicion regarding Fauci’s involvement in a cover-up of the virus’s origins led to former President Joe Biden issuing a preemptive pardon for the top scientist, absolving Fauci of unspecified crimes between 2014 and the day Biden left office in 2025.

Republicans have had difficulty legally maneuvering around the pardon to hold Fauci accountable for alleged wrongdoing during the pandemic, but House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said Tuesday the pardon will not protect Fauci if he lies under oath to Congress during the hearing.

“Americans are still reaping the consequences of Dr. Fauci’s actions,” Comer told Fox News Digital. “Biden’s pardon doesn’t cover Dr. Fauci’s testimony this week, and if he continues to lie, he must be held accountable.”

Here is what to watch for during the hearing.

Fauci and Paul have heated rivalry over risky research

Fauci’s appearance before the homeland security committee marks the latest in his rivalry with Paul, who has long sought to blame the pandemic on Fauci’s leadership.

Paul and Fauci have repeatedly clashed during hearings related to COVID-19 policy since the senator first pushed Fauci as to whether the virus could have been generated in a lab.

The pair first came to verbal blows regarding the technical definition of “gain-of-function” research. In layman’s terms, gain-of-function research refers to genetically engineering a pathogen either to make it cause different symptoms or to make it more easily transmissible.

Fauci told members of Congress multiple times in 2020 and 2021 that the NIAID did not fund gain-of-function research, but the public health expert likely was using the technical, more narrow definition of “gain-of-function.”

The National Institutes of Health defines gain-of-function as experiments performed on pathogens that are already “likely capable of wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations,” such as manipulating influenza viruses to make them more dangerous.

In other words, Fauci’s insistence that his agency did not fund gain-of-function research was based on the premise that such research involved pathogens already capable of spreading among humans. But Paul was asking more generally about genetic engineering of viruses, regardless of whether they were already circulating among humans.

Supporters of gain-of-function research, including Fauci, argue that it is necessary to manipulate viruses to prepare vaccines and treatments should they naturally mutate in a similar way and cause a disease outbreak. But critics, such as Paul, say the risk outweighs the potential reward.

Paul has accused Fauci of sidestepping former President Barack Obama’s moratorium on gain-of-function research and continuing to fund risky research projects through the NIAID.

Other documents released by Paul, not implicating Fauci, suggest that U.S. scientists collaborated with Chinese scientists at the Wuhan lab on a funding proposal to the Defense Department for gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses in such a way that would have created a virus similar to SARS-CoV-2. The Pentagon did not fund the study, but multiple intelligence and public health officials have said that it is possible the Chinese scientists conducted the experiment alone.

Paul has referred Fauci to the Justice Department for criminal investigation multiple times under both the Biden administration and the second Trump administration.

Fauci’s ties to intelligence community

During the hearing, Republicans are likely to reference the complicated history of Fauci’s decadelong relationship with the intelligence community and how it affected inquiries into the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

Paul and other Republicans allege that Fauci used his connection to the intelligence community to shield his agency and himself from liability in funding or supporting gain-of-function research that could have caused the pandemic.

During the pandemic, the National Security Council, CIA, and other intelligence community branches relied upon Fauci’s guidance as a virus expert to determine whether SARS-CoV-2 was made in a lab or was the result of a natural spillover from animal to human.

Documents released earlier this summer by both Paul and former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revealed Fauci steered intelligence officials to a select group of NIAID grantees who agreed with him that the virus was caused by an animal-to-human infection incident rather than a lab leak.

Fauci was involved with commissioning and drafting the “Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2” paper, which dismissed the possibility of a lab leak and quickly became one of the most-cited papers in scientific history.

Later on, Fauci, on multiple occasions, referenced the paper as proof that the pandemic was of zoonotic, or animal, origin and recommended intelligence community officials speak with the authors of the paper to put together their agencies’ respective reports on the virus.

In July 2021, intelligence community personnel debated via email the degree to which to listen to Fauci’s advice, considering his prominence on the White House pandemic task force and as the media figure for the federal government. Personnel also questioned whether they should seek outside, dissenting voices that Fauci suggested the intelligence community ought to dismiss.

An intelligence officer, whose name and office were redacted from the publicly released documents, said Fauci was not to be considered a policymaker but rather a subject matter expert “with a wealth of knowledge about current and historical research who probably knows better than most who the real Coronavirus experts are.”

Pressing Fauci on school closures and vaccine side effects

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has spent years investigating the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, is likely to ask Fauci about his role in encouraging states to adopt strict vaccine mandates during the height of the pandemic and dismissing reported adverse effects from the shots.

Johnson said during a CBS News interview about the diary entries that Fauci’s role in pushing COVID-19 vaccines is just as worthy of congressional scrutiny as the gain-of-function research inquiry.

“It’s not just Fauci’s gain-of-function research that cost millions of American lives; the experimental COVID injections he forced continue killing and injuring many more,” Johnson said.

Kennedy said Monday that Fauci lied about almost all of the public health guidance that led to the closing of schools and businesses in 2020 and 2021.

“He lied about masks,” Kennedy said in a Fox News interview. “He lied about social distancing. He lied about the transmission. He lied about natural immunity, he lied about the … capacity of the vaccine to prevent infection.”

Kennedy also said Fauci wrote in the diaries that the NIAID director suffered from a pulmonary infarction, or a blood clot in the lungs, as a COVID-19 vaccine side effect. That topic did not appear in a word search review of the 1,141 pages of diary entries from 2019 to 2022.

Diaries show Fauci’s media obsession

Fauci’s diaries served not only as a pandemic record but also as his personal press archive, with hundreds of entries listing his interviews, flattering articles, and celebrity encounters.

The top infectious disease researcher described his meteoric rise to fame as “explosive and really unimaginable,” calling himself an “international celebrity.”

On April 1, 2020, Fauci recorded that there had been 3,700 COVID-19 deaths so far in the United States, alongside an entry about the “continued crazy stuff” the public had done to venerate him.

“Petition to name me ‘Sexiest Man Alive’; videos games named after me; Fauci Bobblehead; dishes in [restaurants] named after me, and on and on,” Fauci wrote.

Elsewhere in the document, Fauci documented his deteriorating relationship with Trump as the then-president grew weary of strict lockdown measures and testing protocols.

By June 2020, Fauci saw ex-White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin as his primary ally in the White House to continue to land press interviews, contradicting the wishes of then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

“Kayleigh McEnany essentially saying that I will not be out in the press,” Fauci wrote. “Alyssa Farah is the one hope in Comms since she clearly wants me out there.”

Democrats are a wild card in the hearing

It is not clear what role Democrats will play in Fauci’s hearing before the committee.

No Democrats were present earlier this summer when a career CIA operations officer testified as a whistleblower before the Senate committee regarding Fauci’s involvement with the intelligence community report on the virus’s origins.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), the ranking member on the homeland security committee, later said Democrats were intentionally excluded from all dealings with the CIA witness.

Peters also chided Paul in June for scheduling a closed-door interview with Fauci last month with only Republican members and staff. Peters said Paul’s plan to have a GOP-only transcribed interview with Fauci “undermines the legitimacy of current and future Committee investigations.”

But Peters has supported Paul’s efforts to increase oversight of potentially dangerous life science research.

Peters co-sponsored Paul’s Risky Research Review Act, which would create an independent review board outside of the National Institutes of Health and the intelligence agencies to weigh the risks and benefits of gain-of-function research projects.

A spokesperson for Peters did not respond to a request for comment.