House Republicans on Tuesday subpoenaed a top aide to former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci over his use of his personal email account to discuss Covid origins.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic subpoenaed Dr. David Morens for documents from his private Gmail account after emails released last week confirmed whistleblower allegations that Morens used his personal Gmail for correspondence related to Covid-19.
“Dr. David Morens purposefully evaded FOIA laws to give his ‘best-friend’ EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak non-public, internal information that had the potential to undermine the operations of the United States government,” said subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio).
“This is not only highly concerning, but it is also likely illegal. Dr. Morens must be held accountable for any abuse of power and his blatant disregard for the law.”
Morens also agreed to testify publicly later this year. When he testified privately earlier this year, Morens denied deleting any Covid-19 records subject to federal-records laws, according to the subcommittee. Morens received significant scrutiny from the subcommittee for previously disclosed emails in which he suggested that he used his personal email account to avoid having his records publicized through Freedom of Information Act requests.
“I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly,” Morens wrote in September 2021.
“Don’t worry, just send to any of my addresses and I will delete anything I don’t want to see in the New York Times,” he added.
The whistleblower allegations prompted the EcoHealth Alliance to release emails confirming that Morens and EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak deliberated about internal NIAID conversations and agreed to communicate through Morens’s personal email account. EcoHealth released the emails to push back against allegations that Daszak and Morens participated in a deliberate cover-up of sensitive communications.
“Contrary to the news reports, they show clearly that EcoHealth Alliance was appropriately communicating with senior staff at the NIH, or who formerly worked at NIH, to try to identify ways to reinstate a grant that had been terminated unexpectedly and arbitrarily, then suspended with onerous conditions,” EcoHealth said upon disclosing the emails.
The pair appeared to deliberate about a grant suspension that EcoHealth Alliance was facing early on during the Covid pandemic when the organization’s bat-coronavirus research began to receive significant attention.
“David — We’ll communicate with you via gmail from now on,” Daszak said in one of the emails, noting “we have 15,000 samples in freezers in Wuhan,” the Chinese province where Covid-19 was discovered.
Daszak criticized former president Donald Trump and accused him of emboldening “extremists” targeting EcoHealth Alliance.
“Tony is now fully aware I think and is I am told involved in some sort of damage control,” Morens replied, reassuring his friend that the situation would be resolved.
Daszak is set to testify publicly next month and face questions over his organization’s taxpayer-funded bat-coronavirus research in Wuhan.