The House subcommittee investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic wrote a letter to the National Institute of Health (NIH) on Tuesday, May 28. The panel suggested that high-ranking officials within the NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) conspired to conceal records and “avoid public transparency regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.”
These accusations come as Congress investigates the origins of COVID-19 and the lab leak theory, which alleges that scientists at the Wuhan lab were using NIH funds for gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, potentially making the virus strains stronger.
Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, served as the NIAID director from 1984 until his retirement in 2022. In June 2023, Morens was placed on administrative leave after his emails reportedly revealed an attempt to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by encouraging people to write to his personal Gmail account in case reporters filed a FOIA request for information on his government account. FOIA is a law that discloses government documentation upon request.
“As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly,” Morens wrote an email in September 2021.
He testified in front of the subcommittee last week, apologizing for “snarky and profane comments” made via his private email.
“I made them thinking they were made on my Gmail, my private email, in a manner that was just between a small group of friends and would never end up where it’s ended up,” Morens said. “It’s embarrassing to me, I shouldn’t have done it, but I accept that I’ve done it. I don’t know what to say except ‘I’m sorry.’”
The subcommittee recently subpoenaed Morens’ personal Gmail account, receiving 30,000 additional emails.
One of Morens’ Gmail emails from February 2021 revealed that he learned how to make emails disappear after receiving a FOIA request but before the search starts. In another exchange, he mentioned that both his Gmail and phone calls were now safe, while text messages and government emails were not.
Additionally, Fauci’s former chief of staff, Greg Folkers, allegedly misspelled words intentionally to avoid FOIA searches. For instance, an email from Folkers in June 2021 referred to virologist Kristian Andersen with the subject line “ANDERS$N,” using a dollar sign in his name to prevent it from appearing in email searches if someone requested information from his account.
“This is an apparent attack on public trust and must be met with swift enforcement and consequences for those involved,” subcommittee representatives said when asked about next steps if the reports were substantiated.
As of now, it remains unknown whether Fauci was aware of or complicit in exchanging sensitive government information through back channels. Fauci is set to testify publicly for the first time since his retirement in front of the subcommittee on Monday, June 3.