Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times,
President Donald Trump has terminated former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci’s security detail.
Trump justified the move on Jan. 24.
“When you work for government, at some point, your security detail comes off and you can’t have them forever,” he told reporters in North Carolina, where he is visiting the damage caused last year by Hurricane Helene.
“So I think it’s very standard."
“You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for government.”
Trump has criticized Fauci, who served in his role between 1984 and 2022, over his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Based on their interviews, I felt it was time to speak up about Dr. Fauci and Dr. [Deborah] Birx, two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned,” Trump said in March 2021, referring to a 2021 CNN documentary.
“They had bad policy decisions that would have left our country open to China and others, closed to reopening our economy, and years away from an approved vaccine—putting millions of lives at risk.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to Fauci via Georgetown University where he works.
Trump has stripped other former Trump administration officials of their security detail.
On Jan. 21, the president ended former national security adviser John Bolton’s Secret Service protection.
“I am disappointed but not surprised that President Trump has decided to terminate the protection previously provided by the United States Secret Service,” Bolton wrote in a post on X.
“Notwithstanding my criticisms of President Biden’s national-security policies, he nonetheless made the decision to extend that protection to me in 2021.
“The Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for attempting to hire a hit man to target me.
“That threat remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump’s own assassination. The American people can judge for themselves which president made the right call.”
Trump said that Fauci and Bolton “made a lot of money” and therefore could hire their own security.
On Jan. 23, Trump terminated former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former special envoy for Iran Brian Hook’s security details.
“When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “Do you want to have a large detail of people guarding people for the rest of their lives? I mean, there’s risks to everything.”