Texts obtained from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s phone include a chat between Biden administration officials about pregnant women receiving the COVID vaccine and the risks of miscarriage and birth defects — just three months before they formally recommended pregnant women get vaccinated.
When pregnant women asked if the vaccine was safe for them and their babies, these public officials answered affirmatively, while their private chats appear to tell a different story.
Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson’s office is combing through 34,000 text messages and 522 voicemails from Fauci’s phone, he said. The first release includes four pages.
When Republicans retook control of the Senate in 2025, Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul became the chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) and began compelling testimony and subpoenaing records. At the same time, Johnson gained the gavel of HSGAC’s chief investigative subcommittee. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began turning over records as well.
Vivek Murthy, surgeon general under former President Joe Biden, asked Fauci and then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky whether the health agencies had data on the safety of receiving the COVID vaccine in various stages of pregnancy, according to the texts released by Johnson’s office.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Fauci, Murthy and Walensky via email, but none of them immediately replied.
“Hi Vivek, my understanding is that this is all a data free,” Walensky replied. She noted the CDC had begun collecting surveillance data, including through Vsafe, the centers’ vaccine safety monitoring system.
Fauci initially said there was no reason to worry, but chimed in two hours later that after consulting scientists there may be a risk of miscarriage.
“I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of. 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 said.
“Definitely a good point, esp after dose two,” Walensky replied.
“This is really helpful, thanks. I’ve been hearing the concern about the mRNA causing mutations in the developing fetus as well. That’s a really good point re the cytokine storm post second dose,” Murthy replied.
When the World Health Organization said it did not recommend vaccination in low risk pregnant women later days later, Fauci said the evidence favored vaccination — saying that no safety signal had emerged in the 10,000 pregnant women who had gotten vaccinated at that point. He acknowledged the drug companies had not enrolled pregnant women in their clinical trials testing the vaccine.
“I would say that in any vaccine in which data are lacking in pregnant women one must weigh the potential risks against the benefits,” Fauci chimed in. “No issues have arisen.”
Timeline
The private text exchanges in January 2021 express uncertainty and reflect tricky balance between risks and benefits.
By April 23, 2021, Biden’s COVID Task Force recommended that pregnant women get vaccinated in a widely broadcast press conference.
Then in June 2021, the CDC’s head of vaccine safety published a paper in a world leading medical journal concluding that “preliminary findings did not show obvious safety signals among pregnant persons,” citing passive surveillance data collected on nearly 40,000 women.
“Although not directly comparable, [miscarriages and birth defects] among participants with completed pregnancies from the v-safe pregnancy registry appear to be similar to the published incidences in pregnant populations studied before the Covid-19 pandemic,” wrote CDC Director of the Immunization Safety Tom Shimabukuro in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
He noted that more follow-up study was necessary.
In July 2021, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists announced it was making a “strong recommendation in support of vaccination during pregnancy.”
By August 2021, the officials projected confident certainty in public, Johnson’s office pointed out.
“[Tens] and 10s and 10s of thousands of women who have been followed by the CDC, who have been vaccinated when they were pregnant, there’s no indication whatsoever that there’s any increase of any adverse issue,” Fauci said. “It’s pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated.”
In January 2022, an OB/GYN and maternal-fetal medicine specialist criticized the NEJM study, saying that excluding women in the third trimester would result in a spontaneous abortion rate of 82%, Johnson said.
Despite its multi-billion dollar windfall from the COVID vaccine, Pfizer stopped a study the company said would include 4,000 moms-to-be, instead only enrolling 683 participants, according to former FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director Tracy Beth Høeg.
Pfizer did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Høeg, writing in her personal capacity before joining FDA, found that the company reported 5.1% of infants of vaccinated moms had adverse events of special interest (AESI) between birth and 6 months while only 1.3% of infants in the control arm did.
Johnson’s office says it’s not clear whether Fauci deleted data from his phone. But there is one oddity about the phone: Despite all of the messages, it contains only three named contacts. The rest of the numbers are unidentified.
(DCNF)