Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky took a two-word victory lap on Twitter on Tuesday after emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci came to light which appeared to show the doctor held private beliefs about the coronavirus pandemic that do not exactly square up with his public statements throughout the last year.

The emails were released under a Freedom of Information Act request, and obtained by Buzzfeed News and The Washington Post. One email appears to show Fauci dismissed common masks as a viable mitigation tool to protect people from being infected.

“Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci reportedly wrote to former Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell in February 2020.

“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you,” the email added.

Fauci a month later was publicly against masks, but would ultimately this year advocate for people wearing two masks as his advice over the year became more inconsistent and erratic. Paul — a man who has not kept his disdain for Fauci a secret and has sparred with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases numerous times — tweeted about Fauci on Wednesday.

“Told you,” Paul wrote in a tweet, in which he also included the tag “#firefauci.”

In a follow-up post, the senator wrote, “Can’t wait to see the media try to spin the Fauci FOIA emails.”

Advertisement

The two notably sparred over masks in March of this year during a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, CNN reported.

“You’re telling everybody to wear a mask, whether they’ve had an infection or a vaccine,” Paul said to Fauci. “f we’re not spreading the infection, isn’t it just theater?”

“Here we go again with the theater. Let’s get down to the facts,” Fauci said in response. “Let me just state for the record that masks are not theater. Masks are protective.”

Paul has never wavered on referring to the wearing of masks by people believed to be immune to the coronavirus as “theater.” He was the first U.S. senator to test positive for the virus last March.

Another email shared by Buzzfeed showed Fauci was apparently told in the early days of the pandemic that the coronavirus appeared to be “engineered.” GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado shared a screenshot on Twitter of that email.

Fauci has not yet responded to the release of his emails, and not one reporter asked about them during Wednesday’s daily White House media briefing.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.