WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump said Friday that he had terminated taxpayer-financed security protection for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease specialist who led the nation through the coronavirus pandemic and received death threats after becoming a target of conservatives.

The move, which took effect Thursday night, made Fauci the latest prominent former official to lose his security detail since Trump returned to the White House. It came after Fauci’s chief critic on Capitol Hill, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., publicly called for Fauci’s security to be withdrawn. Trump agreed.

“When you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off and, you know, you can’t have them forever,” Trump said on a trip to North Carolina.

He suggested that Fauci, who retired from government service in December 2022, hire private security. “I can give them some good numbers of some very good security people,” the president said.

A person familiar with the situation said Fauci had done just that, and now had his own security detail. Trump told reporters he would not feel responsible if harm came to Fauci. Fauci served in government for half a century and ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 30 years, advising presidents from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, including Trump. But he and the president had a fraught relationship; in his memoir, released last year, Fauci described it as “complicated.”

In May 2022, a West Virginia man pleaded guilty to sending Fauci and other federal officials emails threatening to kill them and their families.

Trump’s decision on Fauci’s security came a day after he revoked the State Department security details for his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and another former top aide, Brian Hook. Both men faced continuing threats from Iran because of actions they took on Trump’s behalf during his first administration.

Trump also pulled the Secret Service detail that had been protecting another former aide who later became a high-profile critic, John Bolton, his former national security adviser.

Fauci did not have Secret Service protection; he was protected by federal marshals and later by a private contractor whose fees were paid by the government, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service, who declined further comment.

Fauci declined to comment Friday. But in a statement after the pardon was issued, he pointed to his long career in government service and said he had done nothing wrong.

“Let me be perfectly clear,” Fauci said in the statement. “I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me.”