Anthony Fauci’s diaries take aim at News Corp journalist Sharri Markson’s ‘nonsense’ Covid-19 investigation

US former top health official, who was subpoenaed to appear at a Senate hearing into Covid-19, says Markson’s reporting about virus’s origin ‘does not make any sense’ Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s chief medical adviser at the start of the pandemic, has described a book by News Corp investigative journalist Sharri Markson backing the “lab leak” theory of Covid-19’s origins as a “bunch of nonsense” in his newly released diaries. This week, Fauci, 85, was subpoenaed by the Republican senator Rand Paul to appear at a Senate hearing into Covid-19 and his handling of the pandemic. The physician and veteran former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who retired in 2022, accused Paul of an “unhinged” campaign lobbying for his imprisonment and refused to answer questions at Wednesday’s hearing. The hearing was a continuation of Paul’s years-long support of the lab leak theory, or the idea that the Covid-19 pandemic began as a release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Ahead of his appearance, Paul published 1,141 pages of Fauci’s pandemic-era journal entries. In the e