On January 25, 2021, at 6:45 p.m., Dr. Anthony Fauci sent a text message to then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and the man who would become Joe Biden's Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy. The subject was first-trimester miscarriages and the COVID-19 vaccine. The tone was not reassuring.
"Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester," Fauci wrote.
Walensky's response: "Definitely a good point, esp after dose two."
Seven months later, on August 30, 2021, the same Anthony Fauci went on camera and told the country "it really is pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated." No caveats. No mention of cytokine storms. No theoretical concerns about first-trimester miscarriages. Just the full confidence of America's top public health official telling expectant mothers the shots were the right call.
The texts were released on August 10, 2026, by Sen. Ron Johnson, after Sen. Rand Paul obtained Fauci's phone records. The Department of Health and Human Services had produced Fauci's phone on August 5, and the haul was massive — 34,000 text messages and 522 voicemails spanning back to 2014. The miscarriage exchange was one of the first things Johnson flagged.
What makes this particular exchange so damning isn't just the content — it's the audience. Fauci wasn't texting a journalist or a political staffer. He was texting the CDC Director and the incoming Surgeon General. These are the three people most responsible for public vaccine guidance in the United States. All three knew about the theoretical miscarriage risk. All three had the authority to issue warnings, recommend caution, or at minimum call for more data before rolling out a mass vaccination campaign targeting pregnant women.
Instead, over 10,000 pregnant women received the shots after emergency use authorization. Over 15,000 were enrolled in the V-safe monitoring system. A 2023 NIH-funded study eventually examined 1,800 women who had been vaccinated during pregnancy — a study that happened years after the shots were already in arms, and years after Fauci's private text said the quiet part out loud.
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the World Health Organization both had roles in shaping guidance during this period. Neither appears to have been looped in on Fauci's cytokine concern. The text wasn't forwarded to a research team or flagged for clinical review. It sat in a private thread between three officials who, publicly, never wavered.
Some will argue that "theoretically could be associated" isn't the same as proven causation. That Fauci was just spitballing. That's an interesting defense of a man who spent two years telling the country that questioning vaccine safety was tantamount to killing grandma. When Fauci had theoretical concerns, they stayed in the group chat. When the public had theoretical concerns, they got banned from social media.
The pattern is now well-documented. The same officials who demanded absolute public confidence in the vaccines were privately hedging in real time. Not after new data emerged. Not after adverse events piled up. On January 25, 2021 — weeks into the rollout — Fauci already had enough knowledge of the immune response to flag a specific risk to a specific population. He flagged it to the two people who could have done something about it. Nobody did anything about it.
Thirty-four thousand texts. Five hundred twenty-two voicemails. Years of communications from the man who told us to trust the science.
Turns out his own science had a different recommendation — he just never shared it with the patients.