(CNN) — President Donald Trump has terminated Dr. Anthony Fauci’s security detail that was being provided and paid for by the National Institutes of Health. It was pulled on Thursday night.
Given he continues to face ongoing threats due to his public-facing role during the Covid-19 pandemic, Fauci has now hired his own private security that he’ll pay for himself, a source told CNN.
This comes as Trump continues his retribution tour against the officials who previously served under him. He has also yanked security details from former national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“I think you know, when you work for government … at some point, your security detail comes off, and you know, you can’t have them forever,” Trump said Friday in North Carolina, where he was touring storm damage.
Asked by CNN’s Betsy Klein whether he would feel partially responsible if something were to happen to Fauci or Bolton, Trump said no.
“They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security too. All the people you’re talking about, they can go out, I can give them some good numbers of very good security people. They can hire their own security. They all made a lot of money. Fauci made a lot of money.”
Since Monday, Trump has complained about how President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci — the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — as one of his final acts before leaving office.
“Even when individuals have done nothing wrong — and in fact have done the right thing — and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances,” Biden said in a statement at the time.
Fauci served in government for decades and was the nation’s top infectious diseases expert for 38 years. Trump awarded presidential commendations to Fauci and 51 other people who served on the Operation Warp Speed task force during the Covid-19 pandemic, although Trump later claimed he didn’t know who gave it to him.
Fauci has been targeted by many on the far right.
After testifying during a contentious House hearing this summer about the government’s response to the pandemic, Fauci said that he sees a direct link between the rise in death threats made against him and his family and public figures connecting him to Covid-19 conspiracy theories.
“It’s a pattern,” Fauci told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” in June, adding that when someone in the media or in Congress “gets up and makes a public statement that I’m responsible for the deaths of X number of people because of policies or some crazy idea that I created the virus – immediately you can, it’s like clockwork – the death threats go way up.”
CNN’s Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.
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