Dr. Anthony Fauci feigned ignorance throughout his November 23 deposition as part of Louisiana and Missouri’s lawsuit against the Biden administration and federal officials, asserting that he is disassociated from social media. Yet, the public health official admitted he talked to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg about pushing vaccines and noted that one of his daughters worked as a software engineer at Twitter.

Fauci, who said “I don’t recall” 174 times throughout the deposition, faced questions on his own personal concerns about “what people might be saying on social media” about the Chinese coronavirus’s origin. Yet, Fauci feigned ignorance, claiming to be “disassociated” from social media. 

“You know, I’m so dissociated from social media. I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t do Facebook. I don’t do any of that, so I’m not familiar with that. I’ve never gotten involved in any of that,” he claimed. Yet, immediately after, Fauci admitted that he has connections to major players in that sphere, engaging in communications with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in the past. 

“I’ve had communications with Mark Zuckerberg in the past who was — I’ve done, I believe, three outward FaceTime discussions encouraging people to get vaccinated,” Fauci said, proceeding to admit that one of his daughters worked as a software engineer for Twitter. However, Fauci denied that they ever discussed the content of “stuff posted” on the platform or the origin of the virus, claiming that she “has no interest in that.” Notably, Fauci’s daughter is now listed as a software engineer for a leftist organization that, in part, helps groups push vaccines on the American public. 

Fauci later admitted, when questioned about various email exchanges, that he was “concerned” about “further distortions” of the pandemic, citing “wild speculations and accusations” such as “blaming the Chinese.”

He continued: 

There was no evidence of that at the time, and that’s what I was concerned about. And I think we were all concerned about that because if you put this e-mail juxtaposed against the statement of Jeremy about wanting to have a situation where we get down to the truth and people in good faith trying to figure out what was going on, certainly there are distortions on social media. Social media says I put a chip into the vaccine so that I can monitor people. That’s a distortion.

Fauci was questioned on his call in an email to “move quickly” yet claimed that he was vaguely talking about “getting down to the facts”:

I’m talking about getting down to the facts because when the facts come out, that counters distortions wherever that distortion is, speaking here or on social media or in any way, and what I was referring to is that we’ve got to get WHO to convene an unbiased body of people to try and thoroughly examine the information so we can get to the truth, and when you get to the truth quickly — and I said, “It is essential that we move quickly.”

Read the full deposition here.