Former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci has been stripped of his federal security detail despite ongoing death threats over his role in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 84-year-old physician, who stepped down in December 2022 after leading the organization for nearly 40 years, will now have to pay for his own protection. The NIH had been footing the bill to keep the Brooklyn native safe, according to CNN.
Fauci becomes at least the third high-ranking figure who served in Trump’s first administration to lose their federally funded protection.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, both of whom have been critical of their former boss since leaving their posts, were also stripped of their security details after Trump returned to power on Monday. The men have faced death threats from Iran over their hard-line stances on the Islamic Republic while serving under Trump.
Former President Biden had repeatedly renewed their security details, as well as Fauci’s, due to the credible threats.
While Fauci isn’t known to have made enemies abroad, he fell out of favor with much of the far-right by promoting COVID-19 vaccines and scoffing at conspiracy theories about the pandemic that killed more than 1 million Americans.
Though Trump praised Fauci in the earlier days of COVID for his work to develop and distribute vaccines, the doctor told PBS last June that his relationship with the president became “complicated” as the GOP leader’s reelection efforts called into question scientific advice he’d been given while in office.
Trump infamously suggested at the height of the pandemic that COVID could be cured by injecting people with disinfectants or “a very powerful light… inside the body.”
“In the beginning, he actually listened to what we were saying and went along with it,” Fauci said. “I had to contradict him, which was painful for me to do.”
Days before losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump called Fauci a “disaster” and lumped him in with “other idiots” he accused of failing to understand the unprecedented outbreak.
MAGA firebrands like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have expressed disdain for Fauci, whom she said should be in prison during a June 2024 congressional hearing where she refused to acknowledge Fauci was a doctor. Trump mega-donor and advisor Elon Musk called for Fauci’s prosecution in 2022.
Fauci was among those Biden gave a preemptive pardon before leaving office last week to protect him against “revenge” by the incoming Trump administration.
But Trump was still able to cancel Fauci’s security detail and defended his decision to do so, saying on Friday he would not feel any responsibility if harm befell him or any other former allies who had their protection stripped.
“They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security,” Trump told reporters in North Carolina. “You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for the government.”