Emails uncovered by House Republicans from the senior adviser to former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci may implicate him in knowledge of the destruction of government documents related to the origins of COVID-19.
The private Gmail communications from David Morens, who worked under Fauci since 1998, have become a flashpoint in the investigation from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic into the National Institutes of Health’s hand in the early days of the public health crisis.
The subcommittee released 155 pages of subpoenaed emails from Morens and former NIH employee Gerald Keusch just hours before Morens was slated to testify on Wednesday before the panel on allegations that he had intentionally destroyed federal records and deliberately attempted to obscure information from public oversight requests.
Gmail messages sent between Morens and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, reference shielding information from Fauci regarding Daszak’s grant project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded by the NIH. The emails also included discussions alluding to other efforts to ensure that there was not a paper trail connecting Fauci to their discussions.
In a Gmail communication sent to Daszak and Keusch, Morens wrote that there is “no worry about [Freedom of Information Act] requests” on April 21, 2021.
“I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble,” he added.
During the public hearing, Morens said that he and Fauci “usually never talked about” using personal email or phone to communicate with Daszak.
Morens also wrote to Daszak that Fauci and former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins were intentionally trying to distance themselves from the grant project at the Wuhan lab.
“From Tony’s numerous recent comments to me, and from what Francis has been vocal about over the past 5 days, they are trying to protect you [Daszak], which also protects their own reputations,” Morens wrote to Daszak on Oct. 25, 2021.
At the time of the communications in 2020 and 2021, Daszak’s grant that was intended to study bat coronaviruses in southwestern China had been suspended by the Trump administration.
Daszak enlisted Morens, whom he described during congressional testimony as his “mentor,” and Keusch to strategize to reinstate the grant.
Morens defended his actions in testimony Wednesday afternoon, suggesting that he accidentally used the wrong account because both his government email and his personal Gmail account were “fused” in the “blue icon that said mail,” referring to the Mail app that is standard on iPhones.
“The IT people in my institute put one icon on my government phone in which emails and emails were fused,” Morens said. “I didn’t think it was a problem because I can usually tell whether a mail I was looking at was Gmail or government mail.”
Other documents, though, suggest that he engaged in other efforts to prevent communications from falling into the hands of investigators. Emails showed Morens had been in contact with the FOIA officer for NIH, who instructed him on how to avoid having certain documents be retrieved during federal records requests.
“I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d but before the search starts, so I think we’re all safe. Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail,” Morens wrote in February 2021.
Morens testified, however, that he did not realize that emails were federal records.
“I was not aware that anything I deleted like emails was a federal record,” Morens said. “If I’m wrong about that, I apologize because I just never dawned on me.”
Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview ahead of the hearing that the panel would be looking into pursuing criminal charges against Morens with consultation from legal advisers and the Department of Justice.
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On Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting that the DOJ open an investigation into Morens.
Fauci is scheduled to testify before the subcommittee on June 3.
