President Trump revoked the security detail of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who advised Trump on the COVID-19 pandemic but turned critical of Trump once he tried to undermine public health guidance.
Fauci has faced regular threats to his life and has received federal protection for years, but it was ended this week according to a person familiar with the matter.
Trumps says he won’t feel partially responsible if harm befalls former government officials whose security details were cut by his administration after he took office this week.
“They all made a lot of money, they can hire their own security too,” Trump told reporters in North Carolina.
Trump earlier this week revoked protection details for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his top aide, Brian Hook, as well his own former national security advisor John Bolton, who have all faced threats from Iran since they took hard-line stances on the Islamic Republic during Trump’s first administration. All three have fallen out with Trump in the years since he left office.
Their security details had been repeatedly renewed by the Biden administration because of credible and ongoing threats from Iran.
“You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for government,” Trump said.
Fauci was a staff member at the National Institutes of Health for 54 years and director of its National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years.
He was one of the Trump critics that former President Biden preemptively pardoned before leaving office. He and others had been threatened with potential criminal charges and investigation by Trump and his supporters.
This summer at a hearing of a Republican-dominated House panel, Fauci talked of some of the threats he and his family have faced.
“There have been everything from harassments by emails, texts, letters, of myself, my wife, my three daughters,” he told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. “There have been credible death threats leading to the arrests of two individuals, and ‘credible death threats’ means someone who clearly was on his way to kill me. It’s required my having protective services essentially all the time.”