Former Anthony Fauci minion and gain-of-function defender, Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, has stepped down as Acting Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Taubenberger, who was quietly installed in April 2025 as Fauci’s successor amid the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal health bureaucracy, reportedly left his post about two weeks ago.
The departure was publicly confirmed on Thursday during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the NIH’s 2027 budget when Sen. Tammy Baldwin noted that Taubenberger would not be testifying as planned.
The move comes as part of a sweeping leadership purge at NIAID, where eight of the top ten officials have now been pushed out or reassigned since President Trump took office.
Despite that, Taubenberger’s departure doesn’t appear to be the typical voluntary retirement or bureaucratic shuffle.
Taubenberger’s ouster is more likely the direct result of relentless pressure on the agency, or worse, a cover-up.
No group has been more vocal, or more effective, in demanding Taubenberger’s removal than the White Coat Waste (WCW), the taxpayer watchdog organization famous for exposing Fauci’s beagle torture scandals and Wuhan lab funding.
WCW has been hammering Taubenberger’s appointment as a disastrous “vetting failure” since it was announced in late April of last year, just weeks after the Trump team began cleaning house at NIH.
WCW President Anthony Bellotti laid out the damning case in a powerful op-ed for American Greatness on May 1 titled “Fauci’s Lab Leak Henchmen Are Finally Facing Accountability.”
Bellotti detailed how Taubenberger, a longtime Fauci insider and intramural researcher at NIAID since 2006, was not just a passive holdover but an active participant in the COVID lab-leak cover-up machine.
Taubenberger, according to Belotti, co-led efforts with indicted Fauci aide David Morens to undermine Trump’s 2020 ban on gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Additionally, Taubenberger co-authored papers with Morens and Fauci that dismissed the lab-leak theory as “thoroughly discredited” and promoted the natural-origin narrative while protecting EcoHealth Alliance and its Chinese partners.
Emails obtained by WCW through FOIA requests showed Taubenberger was looped in on communications bragging that their work “defends Peter Daszak and his Chinese colleagues.”
WCW has repeatedly highlighted his “Beaglegate”-style experiments, including funding for maximum-pain beagle tests sourced from Ridglan Farms and other grotesque taxpayer-funded abuse.
Taubenberger also resurrected the 1918 Spanish flu virus from a dead body for gain-of-function-style work as emblematic of the reckless “science” he championed.
Bellotti’s op-ed explained:
As recently as 2022, Taubenberger and Morens collaborated with another Fauci-era holdover currently in NIH senior leadership—Matthew Memoli—on taxpayer-funded vaccine tests that infected mice, rabbits, and ferrets with various flu strains, including the deadly 1918 Spanish flu that Taubenberger infamously resurrected in irresponsible gain-of-function experiments.
White Coat Waste has documented how, under Taubenberger, NIAID has continued to dole out new funding for Fauci’s risky bat virus labs and barbaric Beaglegate tests, including one at the University of Missouri that infests puppies purchased from the infamous Ridglan Farms with mutant ticks and denies pain relief.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed. Lawmakers, including Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rand Paul (R-KY), and Representatives Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) have called out the NIH for not cutting Fauci’s animal labs, citing White Coat Waste’s investigations. Gosar and 11 Republican colleagues have even submitted language for the 2027 NIH appropriations bill that would condition new spending on cutting off all active Fauci-era NIAID grants.
Under Taubenberger’s watch as Acting Director, NIAID, with its staggering $6.6 billion budget, continued bankrolling risky bat virus research, dangerous virus experiments, and the same cruel animal labs that defined the Fauci era.
White Coat Waste also teamed up with investigative journalist and friend of President Donald Trump, Laura Loomer, to sound the alarm.
In May 2025, just weeks after Taubenberger’s appointment, WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman appeared on Loomer’s show Loomer Unleashed to blast the decision.
Loomer highlighted Taubenberger’s role in digging up a corpse to extract the 1918 flu virus for gain-of-function research and questioned why animal abuse projects like “Monkey Island” and dog tick experiments were still being renewed under the Trump administration.
“What happened to cutting waste, fraud, and abuse?” Loomer demanded.
The segment went viral, racking up hundreds of thousands of views and putting the White House and new NIH leadership on notice.
WATCH:
Why did the new NIH Director just promote a Fauci ally to lead the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases NIAID @NIAIDNews?
Jeffery Taubenberger, who once ordered a DEAD BODY to be dug up to extract the 1918 flu virus for gain-of-function research, is now the new… pic.twitter.com/0enDhqxwc5
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 16, 2025
Fast-forward to a year later, this month, and WCW was back on Loomer’s show.
In a May 13 segment, Goodman joined Loomer again to expose how Fauci-era holdovers like Taubenberger and NIAID animal testing czar Nicole Kleinstreuer were still greenlighting cruel pet experiments, including NIH-funded kitten torture at Auburn University and smuggling Ebola-like viruses into the country.
WATCH:
Justin Goodman @JustinRGoodman of White Coat Waste @WhiteCoatWaste just joined me to expose a DISGUSTING NIH @NIH cover up involving biological sabotage and Ebola infected monkeys in Montana.
The NIH is covering up a lab accident where a staffer was bitten by a monkey carrying… pic.twitter.com/eFBBshDiyj
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 13, 2026
Loomer also quoted WCW directly, urging RFK Jr. to send the list of “anti-Trump, pro-Fauci NIH officials” packing.
Last night on my show @LoomerUnleashed, White Coat Waste @WhiteCoatWaste Senior VP @JustinRGoodman and I discussed how TDS suffering NIH holdovers like Nicole Kleinstreuer and Jeffrey Taubenberger are still funding Dr. Fauci’s cruel and abusive tests on our beloved pets,… https://t.co/2UwA02v77c
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 13, 2026
Taubenberger’s departure was announced just over a week later.
Daily Caller investigative reporter Emily Kopp credited WCW and Laura Loomer with playing a pivotal role in forcing the administration to act.
I think it was @JustinRGoodman and Laura Loomer pressure actually. Jay encountered a media figure too big for him to smear and shoo away.
— Emily Kopp (@emilyakopp) May 21, 2026
In a statement provided to The Gateway Pundit, WCW’s Justin Goodman celebrated the news:
“Good riddance. White Coat Waste has been calling for Jeff Taubenberger’s scalp for over a year as he kept Fauci’s shameful legacy alive by bankrolling more barbaric animal labs and dangerous virus experiments. Taubenberger is a COVID lab leak cover-up co-conspirator, gain-of-function animal experimenter, and maximum-pain beagle lab funder. We’ve been sounding the alarm about Fauci-era holdovers like Taubenberger and Nicole Kleinstreuer undermining President Trump’s proposed NIH reforms, and we are proud that the administration is listening and finally starting to clean house. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Jeff.”
As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier this month, an NIH whistleblower sent a letter to WCW that has blown the lid off senior officials operating in “full coverup mode” to shield Fauci’s former top virologist, Dr. Vincent Munster, amid two horrifying scandals at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana.
Munster, a longtime Fauci-funded bat-virus mad scientist, has deep ties to gain-of-function research just like Taubenberger, including co-authoring the rejected 2018 DEFUSE proposal, a blueprint for engineering coronaviruses eerily similar to COVID-19.
The FBI has launched a criminal investigation into Munster for smuggling deadly human pathogen samples, including monkeypox virus, from Africa in his luggage. According to the whistleblower letter, the German-born researcher had attempted to transport “dozens of vials” of viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) samples back into the United States in January.
The whistleblower said that NIH officials kept the entire incident quiet, refused to inform the broader RML campus, and quietly banned Munster and his colleagues from the facility. They said the decision to downplay the smuggling came directly “from the main NIH campus in Bethesda” and that senior officials are now operating in “full coverup mode.”
The same letter alleged that a separate lab accident at RML, first exposed by White Coat Waste in January, involved a staffer being bitten by a macaque monkey infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), a deadly foreign virus. The bite reportedly penetrated the worker’s protective suit.
Instead of being transparent with RML employees, the incident was allegedly hidden from most of the campus, and the exposed staffer was quietly “flown out” to avoid drawing attention.
Loomer connected the dots in a post on X, writing, “Taubenberger — Fauci’s hand-picked Acting Director of NIAID since April 2025. As the top boss overseeing RML and all NIAID intramural research, he bears direct responsibility for the culture of secrecy and risk that allowed this to happen (and allegedly get covered up). This is the same guy who kept gain-of-function-style work alive, defended risky narratives, and resisted full MAHA reforms.”
“Now, right as an emerging Ebola outbreak is being discussed in Congress — with real-world cases popping up and fears of spillover into the US from Africa— Taubenberger suddenly steps down?” Loomer continued.
SCALP!!!!
MAJOR VICTORY: Fauci Crony Jeffery Taubenberger OUSTED as National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Acting Director
Fauci Holdover Jeffery Taubenberger’s Sudden Exit Smells Like a Cover-Up as Ebola Threats Tied to the Infected Monkey Bite… https://t.co/Y87oSxL40o pic.twitter.com/A7XxNQJW1P
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 21, 2026
Whether cover-up or the agency succumbing to external pressure, Taubenberger’s exit, alongside the broader NIAID purge, sends a clear message that the swamp creatures who lied about COVID origins, tortured animals with your tax dollars, and pushed dangerous experiments are no longer untouchable.
Unfortunately, as WCW has warned, dozens of Fauci loyalists still lurk in the shadows at NIH.
It is well past time to get them out.
The post JUST IN: ‘Fauci Minion and Gain-of-Function Cheerleader’ Jeff Taubenberger Ousted as NIAID Acting Director After White Coat Waste’s Year-Long Crusade appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.