Dr. Anthony Fauci’s lawyers have created a fund for people to donate for his legal expenses.
The fund “has been established to help pay the costs of the ongoing legal representation of Dr. Fauci,” according to its website.
All contributions are final and non-refundable, the lawyers said.
Fauci, 85, was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 until late 2022.
"Dr. Fauci is facing an unprecedented legal barrage for a retired civil servant, and he deserves a robust defense against these unfounded and frivolous actions," David Schertler, a lawyer representing Fauci, told Reuters. "Dr. Fauci has not done anything wrong, and we are prepared to fight back against this shameful harassment of an honorable man who dedicated his career to saving lives."
Fauci will not receive any payment or other form of distribution from the legal defense fund, his lawyers said. It is set up as a trust with an independent corporate trustee, according to Fauci's legal team.
Neither Fauci nor his lawyers have control over how the money will be distributed or how the fund will be managed, his lawyers said. Invoices submitted by Fauci's attorneys will be reviewed by an independent expert adviser, they said. Once all of Fauci's litigation concludes, any remaining funds will be distributed to charity, his lawyers said.
In his last year of service, Fauci made $480,654, according to financial data obtained by Open the Books. The net worth of Fauci and his wife, who was the chief bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health until 2024, reached $15 million in 2023, according to a financial disclosure released by the transparency organization.
Fauci’s role as head of an agency that sent money to a laboratory in Wuhan, China, near where the first COVID-19 cases were detected, and his statements about the research the agency funded as well as the origins of COVID-19, have come under increasing scrutiny in the wake of senators obtaining hundreds of pages of his diary and emails he and others sent during the pandemic.
Fauci has a pardon covering conduct from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 19, 2025. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), among others, has said that he should be prosecuted because he has allegedly made false statements after the 2025 date, in addition to the contempt he showed Congress.
Paul wrote on X: “For years we were told Fauci was the infallible expert who never made a mistake and never lied. Now his lawyers are admitting the legal exposure is so large they need a special fund to handle it. You can’t fundraise the truth away.”
Fauci also faces multiple probes by state officials, including Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who issued a subpoena to Fauci and said he would investigate whether the infectious disease expert "personally profited off the COVID 'guidance' he issued."
Morens faces up to five years in prison.
Fauci testified in a public hearing in 2024 that he was not aware of a conspiracy to evade Freedom of Information Act requests, after emails from Morens that were released by journalists and lawmakers detailed such a scheme.
“I can send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote in one email. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”
In several missives released by Paul in 2025, Fauci instructed aides to delete emails after they read them.