Did Dr. Anthony Fauci petition the State Department for an emergency travel visa to China so he can take up a position at the Wuhan Institute of Virology? No, that's not true: A Facebook post making that claim originated on a Facebook page with a satire disclaimer. The owner of the page is known for tricking conservatives into liking and sharing made-up content.
The post (archived here) was published by a page named "America's Last Line of Defence" on April 16, 2025. It read:
Anthony Fauci has petitioned the State Department for an emergency travel visa to China. His lawyer states that he's accepted a high-ranking position at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and needs to leave as soon as possible for "important" research.
If you haven't contacted your representative or the State Department you should. Tell them you oppose hime leaving without being charged for his crimes. His Autopen Pardon is null and void.
Lock him up!
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Apr 18 14:56:59 2025 UTC)
A Google News search for articles mentioning "Fauci", "Wuhan" and "Visa" did not return any results confirming the story (archived here).
According to the page transparency tab of the Facebook page that published the meme, it was run by "Busta Troll," which is the nickname of Christopher Blair.
Christopher Blair is a self-professed liberal from Maine who, for years, has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."
His websites usually have multiple satire disclaimers, and the stories very often contain obvious hints they are not real, like category names indicating they are fiction, links to "sources" that instead go to funny or offensive images, or an "S for Satire" logo added to the images used as illustrations. Another telltale sign is the name "Art Tubolls" (anagram for "Busta Troll") for characters in the stories. Blair also frequently pays homage to two of his friends who passed away by using their names ("Joe Barron" and "Sandy Batt") in stories.
Blair's stories have been widely copied by spammy, foreign website networks trying to make a buck by spamming American conservatives with clickbait headlines.
Here you can find some of the many, many stories from Blair's websites Lead Stories debunked over the years.
