Fauci rails against 'dark web people' harassing his wife and daughters with violent threats

• A new documentary from National Geographic traces Dr. Anthony Fauci's life and career.
• In the film, Fauci rails about the harassing phone calls his wife and daughters have received during the pandemic.
• He also shared one moment last summer when he opened a letter and thought "I'm freaking dead."

Dr. Anthony Fauci grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where he says he quickly learned that "you didn't take any shit from anybody."

He carried that spirit with him through the HIV/AIDS crisis in the US during the 1980s and 1990s, meeting with activists and eventually including them in the process of developing clinical trials for new life-saving drugs.

But when the coronavirus emerged roughly two years ago, the level of vitriol targeted at Dr. Fauci - director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the US' leading advisor on COVID-19 - felt wholly different. It extended to his family, including his wife and three grown daughters, in a brand of threatening personal attacks fueled by online rage.

"These fucking dark web people are really, really getting bad," Fauci said in a new National Geographic documentary, speaking to AIDS activist Peter Staley, who checked in on him during the summer of 2020.

"I mean, they're really, really harassing Chris," Fauci said, referring to his wife, nurse Christine Grady, head of the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health.

Fauci and Staley had had their own disagreements in the past - at one point, Staley was even arrested during a demonstration against the NIH, where people held up signs calling for Fauci's resignation.

But "the difference now is that divisiveness is dominating COVID-19," Fauci said.

'Dark web people' targeted Fauci and his family

The one-hour, 40-minute movie, "Fauci," now streaming on Disney+, shares glimpses of Fauci during the pandemic, and offers a window into the extensive harassment and threats he's recieved during the past couple of years.

At one point, during the summer of 2020, Fauci's entire family had to be assigned personal security, during a time when people including far-right QAnon followers were launching serious threats against the virus expert, and members of the Trump White House were trying to discredit him.

"One of them called up with violent threats like eight times today on her cell phone, until she figured 'I gotta just change my cell phone,'" Fauci said of his wife, adding that the threats extended to his three daughters, who were targeted "constantly - which really bothers me more than anything else."

These kinds of threats and harassment were something his family had never experienced, despite Fauci's earlier rows and frequent disagreements with AIDS activists, including Staley.

"I don't understand the hate that people have, and the hate that leads them to do something that could hurt somebody or kill somebody," Grady said of the threats. "It sort of reduces my trust in humanity."

When he opened a letter and 'a puff of powder came up'

In August of 2020, just when Fauci had started to think that "everything is OK" again, he opened up a letter at work and "a puff of powder came up."

"It was on my shirt, my tie, my pants, my hands, and my chin," Fauci said. "The first thing I thought of was 'holy shit, why did I open up this letter?'"

Quickly, he says "the options started to crystallize in my mind: One - it's a hoax, two - it's anthrax and I'm going to get sick but I'm going to take cipro[floxacin] and I'm gonna be OK. Or, three - it's ricin, and I'm freaking dead."

The powder turned out to be benign option number one, but in the meantime while it was being tested, Fauci had to strip down and get hosed off in a chemical lab version of a kiddie pool, per the book "Nightmare Scenario."

Fauci says, to his haters, he represents the truth and 'that is uncomfortable for them'

Fauci understands that he's still "the bad guy" to a lot of people.

"I represent something that is uncomfortable for them - it's called the truth," he said.

He feels confident that the pandemic will end, but it won't be because of any newfound unity or collective action by the public.

"I think we're going to get through it, but we're going to get through of it in spite of this divisiveness and this politicization," he said.