The Trump administration has recovered a cell phone and hard drives used by Dr Anthony Fauci during the Covid pandemic, the president’s FBI chief has revealed.
Speaking Thursday on the Joe Rogan Experience, FBI director Kash Patel described the discovery as ‘a great breakthrough’ in the government’s ongoing investigation into the origins of the pandemic and the federal response.
Patel said investigators had long struggled to locate the devices Fauci used while serving as chief medical advisor to the White House — records that could shed light on key decisions surrounding lockdowns, mask mandates, and ties between Fauci’s former agency and the Wuhan laboratory central to the lab leak theory.
During the episode — where Patel shared a cigar with Rogan and touched on topics ranging from Covid to UFOs — he revealed that the FBI had recovered the phone and hard drives just days before the interview was recorded.
Patel did not clarify when the phone was in use, how investigators verified its connection to Fauci, or how the devices were obtained. Nor did he disclose what the FBI’s ‘multiple investigations’ into the pandemic’s origin have uncovered so far.
It is unclear exactly when the phone was used and how they verified it belonged to Fauci. Patel did not specify how they seized it or what the team’s ‘multiple investigations’ thus far on the origins of Covid have found.
He also warned against drawing premature conclusions, noting that ‘everything’s not necessarily in there’ and that potentially relevant data may have been erased.
Still, Patel called the discovery ‘a victory for the American people’ and said his team is actively reviewing the contents of the devices.
Patel said: ‘We found it [the devices], and at least we can tell the American people we’ve been looking because it is of public importance to figure out, did that guy lie?
‘Did he intentionally mislead the world and cause countless deaths?
‘We owe those answers to the American people, and the best evidence ever is always the people’s evidence who created it. So now we’re going to go and exploit those hard drives.’
‘We did find it [the cell phone], we’re not done, we’re still looking and we’re on the case.’
BREAKING: Fauci’s COVID-era phones and devices were just found—after years of stonewalling.
FBI Director Kash Patel confirms the FBI is now combing through the hard drives to answer one question:
“Did that guy lie? Did he intentionally mislead the world and cause countless… pic.twitter.com/ioljYnwOco
— The Vigilant Fox (@VigilantFox) June 6, 2025
Patel did not specify how his team got the old phone or how they verified it was Fauci’s. Generally, a warrant is required to seize a cell phone, even for a government official.
There are no publicly available warrants out against Fauci currently.
The FBI and CIA have both asserted they think Covid most likely originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, which was conducting risky experiments on coronaviruses in the years leading up to the pandemic.
Some of those experiments were funded by US taxpayer money through grants awarded by Dr Fauci’s old department, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Dr Fauci, once seen as an ‘adult in the room’ amid a chaotic and confusing government response to the initial 2020 outbreak, has seen his sparkling public image take a hit in recent years.
He flip-flopped on crucial Covid safety information including masks and worked to silence scientists with views that differed from the mainstream.
Leaked emails show that in early 2020, he commissioned a paper denouncing the theory as a conspiracy, then publicized the study at a White House news conference weeks later without disclosing his involvement.
He and other public health experts also publicly dismissed the lab leak – with Dr Fauci saying in June 2021 that it was ‘a very, very, very, very remote possibility.’
It later emerged that, as the head of the NIAID, he presided over the allocation of taxpayer-funded grants for virus-enhancing research at the WIV years before the pandemic began.
A federal watchdog found the NIH ‘did not effectively monitor’ those experiments or check whether they involved pathogens with pandemic risk.
Dr Fauci also privately expressed concern the virus may have been the product of a research accident.
Internationally, other intelligence agencies have also supported the lab-leak theory.
The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) carried out a secret investigation into the origins of Covid nicknamed Project Saaremaa during the pandemic, sharing the findings with the US in December 2024.
Investigators found unpublished dissertations from 2019 and 2020 that allegedly discussed the effects of coronaviruses on the human body.
Additionally, uncovered materials revealed Chinese scientists had ‘an unusually large amount of knowledge about the supposedly novel virus available at an unusually early stage.’
Based on the materials BND agents found and analyzed, they used a ‘Probability Index’ to measure the reliability of information, which determined the lab-leak theory was ‘probable’ with an ’80 to 95 percent’ certainty.
Robert Redfield, former CDC director when the pandemic erupted, also accused American and British health agencies of shutting down concerns over potential lab leaks.
The previously told DailyMail.com he is ‘100 percent’ convinced Covid was the result of scientists becoming infected while carrying out high-risk experiments to boost the infectivity of bat viruses amid low biosecurity in Wuhan labs.
Fauci has denied all accusations of Covid being ‘covered up’ or originating from a lab. In 2024, he told a US House panel that he had not suppressed lab leak theories or influenced research to discredit it.
He has also called accusations that he covered it up ‘preposterous.’
Patel said: ‘My mission has always been to put out the truth, whatever the consequences, whoever it’s against.
