Fauci warned COVID vaccine could be 'theoretically' linked to miscarriage in early pregnancy: Senate documents
Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged in newly released text messages that he knew the COVID-19 vaccine could “theoretically" be linked with miscarriage in early pregnancy.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released a series of text messages Monday, obtained from Fauci’s government-issued iPhone.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services produced the device’s contents on Aug. 5, 2026, in response to Johnson’s request, according to a joint statement from Johnson and Paul.
The phone contained more than 34,000 text messages and 522 voicemails. Only three contacts were listed by name; the rest appeared only as phone numbers.
Investigators said it is too early to determine whether any data was deleted.
The announcement highlighted several texts, including what Johnson’s office called a “key text” exchange between Fauci; Rochelle Walensky, then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); and Vivek Murthy, former U.S. surgeon general, dating back to Jan. 25–26, 2021.
As part of a discussion on pregnant women and the COVID-19 vaccine, Fauci stated that a second dose of the vaccine “theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”
Fauci’s text message in full read: “I have asked around a bit more and another issue that came up that you need to be aware of. Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, a cytokine storm occurs when the human immune system makes and releases large numbers of proteins known as cytokines, leading to a “severe complication of certain infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders” that can “cause life-threatening inflammation.”
In a Newsmax segment Monday, Johnson described the disclosure as a “bombshell,” adding, “We’ve got 34,000 texts to go through. I thought we better release this one right away because it impacts public health today. It impacts informed consent as more pregnant women may line up now for the mRNA flu vaccine that’s been approved.”
On Feb. 3, 2021, days after the text exchange, Fauci said in a coronavirus update that regulators “have found thus far, and we have to be careful, but thus far, no red flags about that, about pregnant women.”
Fauci repeated the same guidance in an Aug. 30, 2021, interview in which he said, “Well, are the vaccines safe? … Tens and tens and tens of thousands of women who have been followed by the CDC, who have been vaccinated when they were pregnant, there’s no indication whatsoever that there’s any increase of any adverse issues in a pregnant woman who was vaccinated compared to a pregnant woman who wasn’t vaccinated. … It’s pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated.”
In the weeks and months that followed, other public health officials echoed Fauci’s comments, including Walensky, who wrote in a Sept. 29, 2021, CDC health alert that the agency “strongly recommends COVID-19 vaccination either before or during pregnancy because the benefits of vaccination outweigh known or potential risks.”
Nearly a year after Fauci’s initial text exchange, OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine specialist Dr. James A. Thorp published an open letter to the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which took issue with an April 2021 study in the New England Journal of Medicine that claimed a miscarriage rate of 12.6%.
Thorp wrote that "the raw data revealed an 82% miscarriage rate in women vaccinated during the first trimester," which he said was "consistent with the 81% miscarriage rate noted in the Pfizer post-market data." He argued that the April 2021 study was "deception" that had been "institutionalized."
The Jan. 12, 2022, letter called for “an immediate moratorium on the use of all COVID-19 vaccines” and warned the shot is “not safe for human use, let alone the most vulnerable patients, pregnant women, preborn, and newborns.”
Thorp's assertions drew pushback from others in the medical field who contend that his conclusions misrepresented an incomplete data set that relied on removing 700 third-trimester pregnancies from a sample of 827 pregnant women.
"You can’t do that because the data set is looking at all pregnancy outcomes," wrote Gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter in a 2021 blogpost. "Of course when you remove those 700 pregnancies the miscarriage rate looks artificially high, because the only way a person got into the data set was if the pregnancy had ended and they had been vaccinated."
Fauci’s text messages were released on the heels of his testimony before a Senate panel last week. The 85-year-old Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege more than 100 times during a tense Senate hearing on Capitol Hill on the origins of the 2019 coronavirus pandemic.
His pandemic-era diary entries recent surfaced, some of which included reflections on his own newfound fame, his interactions with influential media figures and a picture of a prayer necklace featuring himself as a saint.
