President Donald Trump has revoked the government security detail provided to Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to CNN. A physician and immunologist, Dr. Fauci was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, and was the chief medical advisor to the president from 2021 to 2022, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. CNN’s source also indicated that Fauci will be paying for private security out-of-pocket in light of the threats that he continues to receive over government policy during the pandemic, as caustic political rhetoric emerged over issues like mask mandates and questions about government funds going to risky research that may have led to the initial outbreak.
Speaking to CNN last summer, Dr. Fauci explained that declarations from public officials and media personalities that laid the blame for pandemic deaths on him or accused him of actually creating the virus in the first place were having a clearly discernible consequence on his safety. “It’s like clockwork,” Fauci said. “The threats go way up.”
Trump has also revoked the security details for Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Brian Hook, all of whom are facing credible threats on their lives from Iran, according to government reports. Bolton was a key figure in defining Trump’s hawkish foreign policy in the two years he was National Security Advisor during the president’s first term. Pompeo and Hook – Secretary of State and U.S. Special Representative for Iran during Trump’s first term, respectively – are similarly credited with shaping his aggressive stance on Iran, including the decision to assassinate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in 2020.
After he was dismissed in 2019, Bolton published a memoir criticizing Trump’s foreign policy, whose publication the White House tried and failed to prevent on the grounds that it contained sensitive information. Speaking to Newsweek, Bolton said that he was “disappointed but not surprised” at Trump’s decision to terminate his protection despite the credible threats against him. Pompeo and Hook, however, have not taken this kind of critical posture towards Trump. Indeed, Hook was reportedly part of Trump’s State Department transition team until the president publicly announced his ouster on social media three days ago, declaring he was “FIRED!” and that he and other officials “are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again.”
Trump has dismissed questions that he could be responsible should anything happen to these former officials who are known to be targets from political enemies – Fauci by domestic extremists; Pompeo, Hook, and Bolton by Iran. “They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security too,” he told CNN’s Betsy Klein. “All the people you’re talking about, they can go out, I can give them some good numbers of very good security people.”
