Sen. Ron Johnson says the fight over Anthony Fauci’s old government phone is bigger than one device, one batch of texts, or one agency filing cabinet. The Wisconsin Republican argues that entrenched HHS staff are dragging their feet, keeping important records out of view while Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tries to pry open the files and get a clearer picture of what happened during the pandemic.
Johnson has been digging into Fauci’s government-issued iPhone as part of a wider Senate probe. The device has already produced a haul of more than 34,000 text messages and 522 voicemails, and the first release sparked immediate attention because it showed Fauci discussing concerns about the second dose of mRNA vaccines and possible effects on pregnant women in the first trimester.
That revelation gave the investigation new fuel, but Johnson says the real story may be what still has not been handed over. He believes longtime employees inside the Department of Health and Human Services are blocking access to records, slowing down the process, and making it harder for Kennedy to see what is sitting inside the agency’s walls.
“Again, we don’t know what we don’t know,” Johnson said. “We don’t know what HHS has. Bobby Kennedy doesn’t know what HHS has.” That line captures the tension around the probe: not just what has been released, but what could still be buried in old accounts, archived messages, and forgotten devices.
The first message dump from the phone included exchanges with former CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Dr. Vivek Murthy, who later became surgeon general under the Biden administration. Among the messages, Fauci raised concerns that fever and cytokine storms after a second dose could theoretically be linked to miscarriage risk in the first trimester.
Johnson sees that as a public health issue, not just an embarrassing paper trail. He has argued that the information matters because it speaks to informed consent, vaccine safety discussions, and whether officials were candid with the public while pushing a message of confidence and certainty.
He also thinks the records on Fauci’s phone are just the opening act. In his view, the messages already released point to a much broader story about the federal government’s handling of COVID-19, including how seriously agencies tracked vaccine injuries and how much was known behind the scenes compared with what was said out loud.
The senator has been blunt about the culture inside the bureaucracy, saying many of the people working in these agencies have been around for years and were part of the broader cover-up he believes needs to be exposed. That kind of language has turned the probe into something bigger than a records review, with accountability now sitting squarely at the center of the fight.
Johnson said Kennedy has made some headway, but not enough to make the process easy. He described the effort as slow, frustrating, and full of hidden corners, suggesting that even with a new secretary in charge, some staffers are still acting like gatekeepers instead of public servants.
“So, you know, Bobby Kennedy has people in those agencies sabotaging his efforts at radical transparency,” Johnson said. “So this is like pulling teeth. So, I mean, I did not know they had government-issued phones. They’ve been sitting there, locked away somewhere.” The remark landed like a warning shot, since it suggests there may be more devices and more records still untouched.
The broader political stakes are hard to miss. For Johnson and other Republicans pressing the issue, the goal is not just to revisit pandemic policy, but to force a cleaner look at how federal health officials communicated with each other, what they knew, and how much of it the public never saw while the crisis was unfolding.
