According to FBI director Kash Patel, the Trump administration has successfully retrieved a cell phone and hard drives that were utilized by Dr. Anthony Fauci throughout the Covid pandemic, as stated on the recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience.

During the show, Patel mentioned that there has been a significant development in the government’s inquiry into the origins of the Covid pandemic and the United States’ actions in response to it.

He explained that the investigative team faced challenges in finding the specific devices that Fauci had employed while serving as the primary medical advisor at the White House during the pandemic. These devices are believed to contain valuable information regarding pivotal decisions concerning actions such as implementing lockdowns, mask mandates, and potential connections between Fauci’s previous department and the Chinese laboratory where the Covid virus might have originated.

While smoking cigars, Patel told Rogan the FBI had retrieved a cell phone and hard drives mere days before the podcast was filmed. 

It is unclear exactly when the phone was used and how they verified it belonged to Fauci. Patel did not specify how they seized it or what the team’s ‘multiple investigations’ thus far on the origins of Covid have found. 

He also cautioned Americans ‘shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that everything’s in there’ and that incriminating data could have been deleted. 

However, he called the bombshell ‘a victory for the American people’ and said his team is immediately working to comb through any data on the device. 

FBI director Kash Patel is pictured on the Joe Rogan Experience. He claims the FBI has ‘found’ one of Dr Anthony Fauci’s Covid-era phones

Fauci is pictured here taking a call on Capitol Hill in 2020. It’s unclear if this is the exact device that was seized

Patel said: ‘We found it, and at least we can tell the American people we’ve been looking because it is of public importance to figure out, did that guy lie? 

‘Did he intentionally mislead the world and cause countless deaths?

‘We owe those answers to the American people, and the best evidence ever is always the people’s evidence who created it. So now we’re going to go and exploit those hard drives.’ 

‘We did find it [the cell phone], we’re not done, we’re still looking and we’re on the case.’

Patel did not specify how his team got the old phone or how they verified it was Fauci’s. Generally, a warrant is required to seize a cell phone, even for a government official. 

There are no publicly available warrants out against Fauci currently.  

The FBI and CIA have both asserted they think Covid most likely originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, which was conducting risky experiments on coronaviruses in the years leading up to the pandemic.

Some of those experiments were funded by US taxpayer money through grants awarded by Dr Fauci’s old department, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Chinese researcher Shi Zhengli, known as ‘bat woman’ for her work on coronaviruses in bats, is pictured in her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2019

Fauci, pictured here making a phone call during a Senate hearing in 2022, has denied all allegations of covering up potential lab leak theories

Fauci has also been the subject of multiple controversies surrounding his handling of the pandemic. 

In February 2020, just before the pandemic exploded in the US, Fauci joined a call with scientists who reportedly expressed concern that parts of the Covid virus seemed inconsistent with natural evolution. 

The next month, researchers released the paper ‘The Proximal Origin of Sars-Cov-2,’ which has been accused of trying to shut down lab leak theories. 

The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) carried out a secret investigation into the origins of Covid nicknamed Project Saaremaa during the pandemic, sharing the findings with the US in December 2024. 

Investigators found unpublished dissertations from 2019 and 2020 that allegedly discussed the effects of coronaviruses on the human body.

Additionally, uncovered materials revealed Chinese scientists had ‘an unusually large amount of knowledge about the supposedly novel virus available at an unusually early stage.’

Based on the materials BND agents found and analyzed, they used a ‘Probability Index’ to measure the reliability of information, which determined the lab-leak theory was ‘probable’ with an ’80 to 95 percent’ certainty.

Senator Rand Paul, pictured here, has also worked with Patel to find Fauci’s personal Covid-era devices

Robert Redfield, former CDC director when the pandemic erupted, also accused American and British health agencies of shutting down concerns over potential lab leaks. 

The previously told DailyMail.com he is ‘100 percent’ convinced Covid was the result of scientists becoming infected while carrying out high-risk experiments to boost the infectivity of bat viruses amid low biosecurity in Wuhan labs.  

Fauci has denied all accusations of Covid being ‘covered up’ or originating from a lab. In 2024, he told a US House panel that he had not suppressed lab leak theories or influenced research to discredit it. 

He has also called accusations that he covered it up ‘preposterous.’ 

Patel said: ‘My mission has always been to put out the truth, whatever the consequences, whoever it’s against.