A government watchdog sent a letter to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week demanding the agency investigate alleged evasions of transparency laws by a top advisor for Anthony Fauci.
On Wednesday, the non-profit group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) demanded the HHS inspector general open a probe into Dr. David Morens, a senior advisor at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In May, a memo the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released suggested Morens inappropriately deleted records and colluded with agency officials to escape requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) law.
“I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d,” Morens wrote in one email, and referenced a “‘secret’ back channel” to communicate with Fauci in another.
“Dr. Morens took it upon himself to reach out to NIH/NIAID’s FOIA contacts and apparently devised methods for effectively shielding his communications from disclosure under FOIA,” wrote PPT Director Michael Chamberlain in a letter to the HHS inspector general. “If that were not enough, it appears as though Dr. Morens sought to rope others into this scheme, establishing a ‘secret back channel’ through which he and his colleagues could communicate for the explicit purpose of making their communications fall outside the scope of what is traditionally subject to disclosure under FOIA.”
When he testified on Capitol Hill last month, Morens laughed off lawmakers’ questions related to the allegations of ethical misconduct.
“I was not aware that anything I deleted like emails was a federal record,” said Morens.
Chamberlain said the emails released by House investigators leave the HHS inspector general “no choice but to investigate.”
“The conduct described clearly violates the standards expected of public servants and is possibly illegal under FOIA,” Chamberlain said in a statement. “The grim stakes of the pandemic make learning why they needed such secrecy a matter of life and death.”
Fauci, who ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, distanced himself from the debacle involving Morens when he testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday.
“I do not do government business on my private email,” Fauci said, denying the existence of a “back channel” to speak with government colleagues.
Lawmakers also pressed Fauci about his demands for social lockdowns and repeated dismissals of alternative theories to explain the outbreak, such as a lab accident.
“Do you agree that there was a push to downplay the lab leak theory?” asked Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
“Not on my part,” Fauci said.
Documents released by House investigators last year, however, show Fauci and his colleagues at the NIH were eager to suppress the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy.”
Rep. Richard McCormick, R-Ga., confronted Fauci with the bureaucrat’s own words taped in an audiobook in which Fauci explained how governments, schools, and corporations could make their lives “difficult” for people who chose different medical treatments for Covid than untested injections.
“Once people feel empowered and protected legally, you are going to have schools, universities and colleges are going to say, ‘You want to come to this college buddy, you’re going to get vaccinated, lady, you’re going to get vaccinated,'” Fauci said in the recorded interview played at Monday’s hearing. “Big corporations like Amazon and Facebook, and all those others, are going to say ‘You want to work for us, get vaccinated,’ and it’s proven that when you make it difficult for people in their lives, they lose their ideological bullshit and they get vaccinated.”
“You affected people’s ability to work, travel, be educated, to actually flourish in America, to self-determine, as well as God-given rights,” McCormick told Fauci. “You inspired and created fear through mask mandates, school closures, vaccine mandates that have destroyed the American people’s trust in our public health institutions. This fear you created will continue to have ripple effects over generations to come.”
