Trump Administration
Trump Administration
Trump Administration
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Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who was one of the nation’s top health officials for decades, had received death threats during the coronavirus pandemic. He has hired his own security detail.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Reporting from Washington
President Trump said on Friday that he had terminated taxpayer-financed security protection for Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the infectious disease specialist who led the nation through the coronavirus pandemic and received death threats after becoming a target of conservatives.
The move, which took effect on Thursday night, made Dr. Fauci the latest prominent former official to lose his security detail since Mr. Trump returned to the White House. It came after Dr. Fauci’s chief critic on Capitol Hill, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, publicly called for Dr. Fauci’s security to be withdrawn. Mr. Trump agreed.
“When you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off and, you know, you can’t have them forever,” Mr. Trump said on a trip to North Carolina.
He suggested that Dr. Fauci, who retired from government service in December 2022, hire private security. “I can give them some good numbers of some very good security people,” the president said.
A person familiar with the situation said Dr. Fauci had done just that, and now had his own security detail. Mr. Trump told reporters he would not feel responsible if harm came to Dr. Fauci.
Dr. Fauci served in government for half a century and ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 30 years, advising presidents from Ronald Reagan to Joseph R. Biden Jr., including Mr. Trump. But he and the president had a fraught relationship; in his memoir, released last year, Dr. Fauci described it as “complicated.”
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