 [NY Post] Dr. Anthony Fauci had his taxpayer-funded security detail pulled, President Trump confirmed during a press conference Friday.
“I think when you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off, and you know, you can’t have them forever,” Trump told a reporter at a hurricane response briefing in Asheville, NC.
“We took some off other people too,” he noted, apparently referring to former national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“They can hire their own security too. … I can give them some good numbers of very good security people,” Trump added. “Fauci made a lot of money. They all did.”
Asked if he would feel “partially responsible if something were to happen” to Fauci or Bolton, Trump responded: “Certainly I would not take responsibility.”
Fauci, who is still facing threats over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, has hired personal security since having the government detail revoked on Thursday, according to CNN.
The longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has been accused of funneling taxpayer money oversees for dangerous gain-of-function research — including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from where many believe SARS‑CoV‑2 leaked to kick off a worldwide pandemic.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) had requested security for Fauci back in 2020 due to the death threats he was receiving for the role he played in advising the government during the pandemic.
He did not have Secret Service protection and was instead being protected by federal marshals, and then a private security contractor for which the government was paying, per the New York Times.
While some are outraged at the idea that Trump is stripping Fauci of his security detail, the truth is that he hasn’t left Fauci a sitting duck to security threats. As Trump pointed out, he’s got plenty of money, and Fauci has been using his own private security detail for months now.
“Dr. Anthony Fauci is no longer getting a taxpayer-funded security detail and SUVs after the U.S. Marshals Service quietly dropped his nearly two-year $15 million deal,” the Daily Mail reported back in December.
Despite retiring from his $480,000-a-year government job in December 2022, the nation's top COVID doctor received a security detail for almost two years.
Dr. Fauci, who has an estimated $11 million net worth, was constantly surrounded by U.S. Marshals at the time whether he was at home or going to TV studios to film interviews.
That cost taxpayers $15 million in total, a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. Marshals and the Department of Health and Human Services obtained by DailyMail.com first revealed.
That taxpayer-funded security arrangement quietly ended on September 30, 2024, the documents show, days before the election.
Fauci’s taxpayer-funded security detail ended during Biden’s presidency, not Trump’s. No one cried foul back when this was first reported. 
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