Donald Trump on Friday said he had pulled federal security protection for the former top US health official Anthony Fauci.
Fauci, who served as the nation’s top infectious disease official during the Covid-19 pandemic and had served seven US presidents, coming from both parties, as a public health leader for decades, was provided security under the National Institutes of Health, according to CNN, which earlier reported the move.
Trump was publicly critical of Fauci at the height of the pandemic and the official began receiving threats. He told Congress at a hearing last year that he had received “credible death threats” and that the threats had continued until the present day, even though he retired in 2022.
Fauci had his security protections revoked on Thursday night, CNN reported, citing an unnamed source. He has since hired his own private security that he will have to pay for himself, it says.
Since returning to the White House on Monday, Trump has ended security details for several other leading figures from his former administration, including his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, his former national security adviser. Bolton and Pompeo were loyal lieutenants during the first Trump administration but became critical when he was out of office.
Speaking on a trip to North Carolina on Friday to see the damage from Hurricane Helene wreaked last year on the Asheville area, Trump was asked about his latest aggressive moves.
On Fauci, he said: “When you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off. You can’t have it forever.”
Asked if he would feel responsible if something was to happen to Fauci or to Bolton, for example, Trump said: “No. They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security too … I can give them some good numbers of very good security people.”
He added: “Certainly I would not take responsibility.”
Fauci told a congressional committee in public testimony last year: “There have been everything from harassments by emails, texts, letters to myself, my wife, my three daughters. There have been credible death threats, leading to the arrests of two individuals.”
Having been criticized early on by Trump, Fauci added that far-right lawmakers and the conservative Fox News drove a rise in threats, triggered because conservatives tried to blame him for the high level of coronavirus deaths in the US, even though he became one of the leading faces of the government effort to combat the pandemic.
Outgoing president Joe Biden issued a pre-emptive pardon to Fauci in case Trump tried to have him prosecuted upon taking office again.
