Clearly if they were being recommended to front line workers, etc, they are expected to have at least some efficacy.
Personally, I think it's a bad example of "experts lieing", even if it is potentially a lie under some very narrow reading.
If I say "You should smoke cigarettes because it will help you lose weight." That advice is a lie, even though on a technical/literal level cigarettes do help you lose weight.
> "You should smoke cigarettes because it will help you lose weight."
Standing to you the above is not a lie and I agree. I think it's a bad advice, but not a lie.
To me, that doesn't sound as "bad for you". Maybe if "not recommended" is taken out of context (and extrapolating that into "not recommended because masks don't work").
It's still not a lie, as far as I can tell.
N95 masks are strongly believed to help but do not buy them. Save them for health care workers. We do encourage you to wear bandanas, gaiters/buffs, homemade cloth masks, or other non-medical PPEs. They are of unknown efficacy but they can't hurt. But don't buy N95s.
Which a lot of people would have heard as: You really should be wearing N95 masks and others won't do you much if any good but we need to save them for the important people.
(At which point, a lot of people would have been F this and tried to buy N95 masks for their own protection.)
My non-native English might betray me, and I didn't follow Fauci's statements from the beginning, but based on the quoted article, where is the lie?
"they weren’t recommended" doesn't mean that he said masks, made of cloth or otherwise, don't work.