Jim Jordan

WASHINGTON - Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, repeatedly trashed U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan in a private diary released this week by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul.

Entries from the diary’s 2020-2022 time frame describe the Champaign County Republican as “ranting” and mock his combative style at multiple hearings.

“Major clash with Jim Jordan (R-OH),” Fauci wrote in July, 2020. “Go to YouTube to see. I believe that I made him look silly.”

Paul released the diary, which he calls “Tony’s Diary,” several days before Fauci’s Wednesday appearance before his committee.

The 1,141-page document contains Fauci’s personal entries from Jan. 6, 2020, through Dec. 17, 2022. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he found the material on government servers and provided the records to Paul’s committee.

Related: Sen. Moreno unleashes expletive-filled attack on Fauci at Senate hearing

Fauci addressed the diary’s release in his opening statement at Wednesday’s hearing before invoking his Fifth Amendment right.

“Given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently, his publicly releasing my unredacted diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said.

Jordan responded to the diary’s contents in a Newsmax interview this week, saying it confirmed years of skepticism about Fauci’s public statements.

“It’s almost like were you lying to Congress or were you lying to your diary?” Jordan said. “Were you lying to the American people, or were you lying to your, you know, your diary?”

He added “everything he told us turned out to be false,” before concluding “this guy was a joke from the beginning.”

The diary’s earliest entry involving Jordan comes from a July 2020 hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on COVID-19, after which he noted approvingly that CNN’s Jim Sciutto, Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo “dumped all over Jordan” in their coverage.

By November 2020, Fauci grouped Jordan with other Republican leaders he viewed as enabling President Trump. “The GOP leadership that are backing Trump (McConnell, McCarthy, Jordan, Blount) are incredibly shameful,” he wrote.

Fauci’s most detailed account of Jordan comes from an April 2021 oversight hearing. He described Jordan doing “his usual aggressive asking me multiple questions without giving me a chance to answer.” He recorded that Rep. Maxine Waters told Jordan to “shut up” when he kept talking after his time expired.

CNN anchor Dana Bash texted Fauci supportive messages after that exchange, according to his diary.

“I just watched the whole Jordan thing,” Bash wrote. “Again, you’re a better man than I. … As our friend Wolf Blitzer said to me yesterday – no one would have blamed you if you said simply ‘Mr. Jordan, go f--- yourself.’”

A day later Bash sent another text noting a Vanity Fair headline: “Jim Jordan trips over his own (expletive) trying to debate Anthony Fauci.”

Fauci returned to Jordan in a July 2021 entry, complaining that Jordan and Paul were “tweeting about me all the time and actually raising money by trying to discredit me.”

In September 2022, he wrote that he expected further attacks from Republicans, “either in the House with Jim Jordan et al or in the Senate with Rand Paul et al,” predicting they would “likely treat me like they treated Hillary Clinton during the Benghazi hearings.”

When Jordan was asked about Fauci’s communications with Bash and other journalists, whom NewsMax’s Ed Henry described as “sucking up” to Fauci, he gave a sarcastic response.

“This was just journalists being objective,” said Jordan. “We know how they’re objective people. They were just being objective. So yeah, I know it’s what we always thought. Now we’re seeing it in black and white in the Fauci diary.”