Senate committee releases Fauci texts showing private concern about mRNA vaccine risk to pregnant women
A Senate subcommittee released text messages from Dr. Anthony Fauci's government iPhone in which Fauci, in January 2021, expressed concern that mRNA vaccines could theoretically cause miscarriages in the first trimester due to fever and cytokine storms after the second dose. The messages were exchanged with then-CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Dr. Vivek Murthy, who later became Surgeon General. Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rand Paul (R-KY) obtained the phone from HHS as part of a broader congressional investigation into Fauci.
Single source · Not corroborated
Sen. Ron Johnson, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released what he described as the first tranche of private messages recovered from Fauci's government iPhone on Monday. The central text, dated January 2021, shows Fauci writing to Walensky and Murthy: "Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester."
Johnson, in an interview with Fox News Digital, said the disclosure was "just the tip of the iceberg" and argued the messages showed Fauci privately acknowledged a risk he did not adequately communicate to the public. Johnson said he had "never heard a federal health official admit that about the injections." Fox News was the primary outlet reporting the story at this stage, framing the texts as evidence of a gap between Fauci's private and public positions on vaccine safety.
Johnson also raised a statistical argument about a June 2021 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Tom Shimabukuro. The study reported that, of 827 pregnancies exposed to mRNA vaccines, 104 ended in what the study termed spontaneous abortions. Johnson contended the study's denominator was misleading, arguing that since approximately 700 of the 827 received the vaccine in the third trimester — when miscarriage risk is minimal — the relevant figure should be 104 out of 127 pregnancies vaccinated in the first or second trimester, which he described as an "82% miscarriage rate." Independent epidemiologists and subsequent reviews of the Shimabukuro study have previously noted that its methodology and denominators were debated at the time of publication, though the study's authors and the CDC maintained that its findings did not show a safety signal above background miscarriage rates.