Bill Maher says Anthony Fauci “was caught in actual lies” as he calls him out on live air

Bill Maher had a lot to say about Anthony Fauci on Friday. The seventy-year-old comedian went after the eighty-five-year-old former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director during his HBO show Real Time, calling him out for telling "actual lies" about the origins of COVID-19.

This came just days after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination a hundred and eleven times during a Senate hearing over his pandemic handling on Wednesday.

"He was caught in actual lies," Maher said.

He went on to say,

"The big issue to me is the origin of this, which is very important. How did it start?" Maher added.

Maher took issue specifically with Fauci's early claims that the virus came from animal-to-human contact at a wet market in Wuhan, China. That being said, it wasn't just the public statements that bothered him.

"He was telling people up front when it first began it was from the wet markets. It could not, that's a conspiracy theory, if you say it escaped from the lab," Maher said.

Maher argued that Fauci’s diary showed he was privately aware of scientists’ early concerns about a possible laboratory origin.

"And he knew better. Because we have him in his diary telling us what he was saying to other scientists, who were saying, 'No, absolutely.'"

Bill Maher's criticism echoes allegations raised by CIA whistleblower:

Turns out Bill Maher wasn't the only one saying it. As per a report shared by Fox News in May 2026, CIA whistleblower James Erdman III chose to testify before Senator Rand Paul's Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at what Paul described as

"great personal risk."

Erdman, a CIA veteran, alleged that the intelligence findings favoring a laboratory origin were buried or excluded from official assessments during the Biden administration.

Paul was blunt about what that meant. Paul said in his opening statement,

"Yet those conclusions never shaped the official narrative, never made the intelligence report. Congress was never told,"

He went on to add,

"That is not analysis. That is a cleanup operation."

Fauci came up by name. When Paul asked Erdman directly whether the CIA downplayed the lab leak likelihood, Erdman said,

"It was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci, injecting himself into the IC."

That answer prompted several GOP lawmakers to call for Fauci's criminal prosecution. Senator Josh Hawley told Fox News,

"We just heard testimony that he intervened behind the scenes to try and get our own intelligence agency, CIA, FBI to change their assessment of the lab leak. Why? Because he helped fund the Wuhan lab. He supported and funded gain-of-function research, and then he tried to cover it up."

"I hope he's indicted," Hawley added.

Bill Maher on equal opportunity criticism and the Mark Twain Prize:

Bill Maher's willingness to go after both sides of the political aisle has defined his decades-long career. This year, it earned him the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, presented annually at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

According to a report shared by ABC News, Bill Maher is the 27th recipient of the award, joining past honorees like Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, and Dave Chappelle.

He spoke about the honor in an interview with ABC News' This Week.

"There aren't a lot of awards for comedy and it's pretty overlooked like in movies. But for what I do, it's yes, the award, I think, to get. And again, there's not many for this particular brand of show business, so I was very grateful," Maher said.

The award came with some controversy. President Donald Trump was the chair of the Kennedy Center's board at the time Bill Maher was chosen, and when news of the honor first surfaced, the White House communications team called it

"fake news."

Trump had also attempted to rename the memorial to add his own name, a move a federal judge later declared illegal.

This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl pressed Bill Maher on Trump's reaction.

"He was just mad at me because I went to his house for dinner with no guarantee that I would leave. It was never in the cards that I was ever going to come over to his side," Maher said.

"It's better to just talk and go through this," he added.

Maher was referring to a March 2025 dinner at the White House with Trump, organized by mutual friend Kid Rock. After Maher discussed the experience on Real Time, the backlash followed quickly.

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"I reported honestly that it, no, it wasn't a terrible experience at all. From a guy who has done some terrible things," he said.

Trump has since continued to attack Maher, accusing him of having so-called "Trump Derangement Syndrome," a claim Maher denies.

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