Anthony Fauci's COVID-era iPhone is now in the hands of Senate investigators, and the very first detail to emerge from it is stranger than anything Democrats spent years trying to explain away.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, revealed that despite using the device for roughly eight years, Fauci had only three contacts saved on it. Three.
Johnson shared that detail Friday night on NewsNation's Katie Pavlich Tonight, which journalist Catherine Herridge guest-hosted that evening. She had also watched Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment 111 times during a combative July congressional hearing.
"I can't and my staff can't guarantee that everything was preserved. What is odd is most of those text messages are associated with a phone number. He only had three contacts, which is pretty odd," Johnson said.
"There's a lot of information on there. Over 34,000 texts, I think 522 voicemail messages... there's a lot to go through."
— Katie Pavlich Tonight (@KatiePavlichNN) August 8, 2026
WATCH: @SenRonJohnson joins @C__Herridge to share his initial findings after he received a copy of the data from Dr. Anthony Fauci's COVID-era cell phone. pic.twitter.com/JIRe6Zjs4N
As we already know, the Fifth Amendment right can’t protect Fauci because his pardon from Joe Biden’s autopen negated that right. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. The decision on whether to pursue criminal charges now sits with the Justice Department.
A copy of Fauci's phone landed with Johnson's subcommittee last week as well, and investigators have already extracted its contents. They're now working through more than 34,000 text messages and 533 voicemails, with Johnson saying the material spans roughly from 2014 through Fauci's departure from the National Institutes of Health in December 2022.
ICYMI: She Called Fauci a Sociopath on CNN, and the Panel Went Nuts
Johnson also discussed the discovery Thursday with Fox News' Laura Ingraham, and his answers made clear the investigation is still in its early stages. "We're downloading the phone right now," Johnson told Ingraham when she asked what investigators had learned so far. He noted that what his team has reviewed predates the pandemic, calling that a good sign for how the download is being handled.
Johnson said investigators plan to cross-reference the phone's contents against material Fauci previously turned over in response to FOIA requests, checking whether he handed over everything he was supposed to. That comparison carries extra weight given what's already known about Fauci's inner circle. "We know, obviously, his henchman, David Morens, showed him how to delete emails, or remove them, and so, it might be a treasure trove," Johnson said. He added that Fauci's own diaries had already proven revealing. "I think the diaries certainly were," Johnson said. "They showed Fauci for the complete phony that he was."
Will we get to see the contents like we saw the diary? Not so fast. Don't expect Johnson to release everything at once. "This is not going to be a document dump. I also need to preserve documents for our investigation. We are interviewing other people that he may be texting. And if you're going to get truthful answers out of people, you can't necessarily show them all your investigatory material, as well," Johnson said.
He did promise the public won't be kept in the dark forever. "So, again, I'm not going to hold this close to the vest when there are things that the public needs to see. I'm hoping to work very closely with Senator Rand Paul and his staff and release these things jointly," Johnson said.
LAURA INGRAHAM: “Senator, you have the phone with you.”
— Overton (@overton_news) August 6, 2026
“Can we look through it on live TV?”
SENATOR JOHNSON: “No, we’re downloading the phone right now.”
LAURA INGRAHAM: “What can you tell us about what you have learned thus far?”
SENATOR JOHNSON: “From the phone, not much… pic.twitter.com/xr28Wooh5Y
One thing is for sure. It's strange that the architect of our nation's COVID response, and who communicated constantly enough to rack up tens of thousands of texts and hundreds of voicemails, somehow only bothered to save three phone numbers. Who were these three? If there were more, can the rest be recovered? If others were deleted, why were they deleted?
The walls are closing in on Dr. Fauci, that’s for sure.
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