Fauci Pressured CDC Director Walensky to Override ACIP on COVID Boosters, Diary Shows

Dr. Anthony Fauci pressured CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to override an ACIP booster recommendation in 2021 despite her reservations. This was revealed in Fauci’s diary entries as part of a 1,141-page PDF released by Senator Rand Paul.

On September 23, 2021, Dr. Fauci wrote in his diary that it was a “very eventful day” because it was the day of the ACIP recommendations for boosters. The committee recommended boosters for people over 65 and for those 18 to 64 with underlying conditions that lead to severe disease. Fauci and others were allegedly “outraged” by the failure to recommend boosters to healthy teachers and others who may have higher occupational or institutional exposure.

“I finally got a chance to speak with Rochelle and literally begged her to override that decision, which was only a 9-to-6 decision and not an overwhelming unanimous recommendation,” Fauci wrote. “Rochelle still felt she could not go against her committee. I pleaded with her over the phone, telling her that I would absolutely strongly defend her publicly if she made allowance for teachers and healthcare workers to get vaccinated even though they were healthy.”

“I explained to Rochelle that if she does not do that, she would be forever branded as someone with no leadership capabilities at all, and if she did overrule them she could turn lemons into lemonade because she could reclaim her role as a leader since her reputation is one of unfortunately being a very weak leader,” Fauci added.

Dr. Fauci wrote that he couldn’t understand Walensky’s reluctance to go against the recommendation when it is “so blatantly incorrect.” Fauci said he dictated his diary entry at 10 pm on September 23rd. PBS reported the following day that Walensky issued a statement Thursday evening, and an official press release was issued on Friday, the 24th.

“As CDC Director, it is my job to recognize where our actions can have the greatest impact,” Walensky said on the evening of September 23, 2021. “At CDC, we are tasked with analyzing complex, often imperfect data to make concrete recommendations that optimize health. In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good.”

This came a month after another diary entry in which Fauci talks about the ACIP committee’s anger at being treated like a “rubber stamp” after a plan was leaked to the press. The August plan stated that booster doses would be available for all fully vaccinated Americans in September, eight months after the previous dose. Walensky assured Fauci that ACIP would go along with their recommendations at the time and panicked after the ACIP panel became upset from the leak of the White House’s booster plan.

Elsewhere in the diary, it notes that the eight-month timeframe “was not based on any biological or clinical science. It was based purely on logistics.” COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients was adamant that they stick with the message that the science dictates itis 8 months for PR reasons.

Walensky has been particularly critical of the leadership by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the firing of the ACIP panel members, and other vaccine-related information shared by the current Trump administration. In 2025, Walensky was named as the Chief Medical Advisor of the new Vaccine Integrity Project, created by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) to counter the information coming from HHS and the health agencies under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership. VIP is funded by Walmart heiress Christy Walton, and CIDRAP has received funding from 3M and the Bill Gates Foundation, among others.

Walensky wrote an op-ed for STAT News describing her concerns about the current administration’s vaccine information and policy. In the op-ed, Walensky said the CDC was the first to share the facts as they knew them and update recommendations accordingly. She added that the CDC was the target of “misguided partisan political attacks” and led a COVID-19 vaccination effort that “ultimately prevented an estimated 3.2 million deaths and saved the country an estimated $1.15 trillion.”

The estimates of lives saved from the vaccine come from a modeling study that involved no observation. The study was not peer-reviewed, and the lead author, Meagan Fitzpatrick, is a faculty member at the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The UMSOM conducted Pfizer-funded clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccine and published a study on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine with two faculty members, alongside 14 Pfizer employees and two BioNTech employees who hold mRNA patents.

Walensky wrote in her op-ed that HHS is “incrementally chiseling away at our previously trusted systems and leaving behind a shaky, fragmented facade that is increasingly obscure and untenable.” One of her examples is the “dismissal of the expert members” of the ACIP panel.

Ashish Jha, who served as the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator from 2022-2023, also expressed mixed reactions to the ACIP panel’s recommendations. In June, 2025, he said Secretary Kennedy was working to destroy the vaccine infrastructure and that his ACIP panel is “unqualified.” When Walensky overrode the 9-6 decision by the ACIP panel, Jha said she did the right thing. Earlier in 2021, he disagreed with ACIP’s decision to pause the Johnson and Johnson vaccine due to clotting events and suggested the FDA and CDC should move forward anyway since the ACIP panel is “just advisory.”

The Dr. Fauci diary entries released by Senator Paul reveal other instances in which Fauci dismisses the ACIP recommendations when they don’t reach his preferred conclusion. On November 25, 2020, HHS Secretary Alex Azar sought to act quickly to distribute the vaccine to vulnerable groups such as health care workers, nursing home residents, and older adults. Fauci said he disagreed with Azar’s approach of not consulting ACIP, because it would be considered a PR disaster.

“We have been saying all along that an independent body (ACIP) would be very much involved in these recommendations,” Fauci wrote in his diary. “It would be interpreted as sidestepping an established process by political influence. My argument turns the tide to get ACIP involved with us from the beginning. They may agree with us (which is great) or they may not, whereby we can say we included them in the process, but we do not accept their recommendation.”

When CIDRAP launched the VIP with Walensky as Chief Medical Advisor, CIDRAP Director Michael Osterholm stated: “There is no alternative to the ACIP.” He created a project to provide the public with information about vaccines, headed by the former CDC director who overrode ACIP recommendations while stating there is no alternative to ACIP.

Walensky and others who went against ACIP recommendations to support their own conclusions have continued to criticize Secretary Kennedy for firing the panel members and replacing them. An ongoing court battle has prompted Kennedy to create a new ACIP charter that broadens and formalizes the requirements for members to be approved for the advisory panel.

Critics say the new appointments are designed to affirm Kennedy’s views. Dr. Fauci’s diary entries show that earlier agency leaders were prepared to manage, soften, or set aside ACIP advice when it did not align with predetermined policy goals.

Kennedy is criticized for putting members on the board who will affirm his conclusions, while previous leaders in the health agencies simply dismissed recommendations that didn’t align with their predetermined conclusions, according to the statements written in Dr. Fauci’s diary. All recommendations made by ACIP under the guidance of Secretary Kennedy have been accepted by the CDC as of July, 2026.