House Coronavirus Subcommittee Accuses Former Fauci Advisor of Engaging in Alleged ‘Wrongdoing and Illegal Activity’

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a staff memo Wednesday exposing the alleged wrongdoing and illegal activity of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former Senior Advisor, Dr. David Morens.

In the 35-page memo, the Subcommittee alleges that Morens, a top adviser at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), unlawfully deleted records critical to uncovering the origins of COVID-19,  used a personal email as a backchannel to help Fauci and Eco Health Alliance avoid transparency, undermined the operations of the U.S. government, likely lied to Congress on multiple occasions, and repeatedly acted in a way that is unbecoming of a federal employee.

Until recently, Eco Health, a global health and pandemic prevention nonprofit run by British zoologist Dr. Peter Daszak, received federal funding to conduct its risky gain-of-function experiments.

Daszak and then-NIAID Director Anthony Fauci skirted a 2014 moratorium on gain-of-function research and continued their coronavirus experiments in Wuhan, China, ahead of the COVID outbreak.

As American Greatness reported, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) informed Daszak on Tuesday that it has initiated formal debarment proceedings to prevent him receiving any more taxpayer dollars.

Emails uncovered by Subcommittee Republicans reveal that Morens improperly conducted official government business from his private email account and solicited help from the NIH’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office to evade records requests.

The Subcommittee’s memo states that Fauci himself also participated “in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels” of the agency to “hide” and allegedly “destroy official records regarding the origins of COVID-19.”

Shockingly, someone from the NIH FOIA office appears to have instructed Morens on how to delete federal records. Then, in multiple emails, Morens admitted to deleting his email correspondence with Daszak and Fauci.

“We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them,” Morens wrote in a June 16, 2020, email.

“[I] learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d but before the search starts,” Morens informed his colleagues in a Feb. 24, 2021, email. “Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.”

“[T]here is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail [sic], or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote in an April 21, 2021, email. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

“If i [sic] had to bet, i [sic] would guess that beneath Tony’s macho I-am-not-worried reaction he really is concerned,” Morens also wrote in an April 22, 2021, email about Fauci’s private worries over an EcoHealth grant.

On May 13, 2021, Morens said he connected a friendly reporter or colleague to his private email account, referring to it as “our secret backchannel.”

“I suggested Arthur try to interview Tony directly and connected him to our ‘secret’ back channel,” he wrote.

In one shocking exchange on May 28, 2021, NIH’s Office of the General Counsel instructed the agency’s FOIA office to “not release anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/WIV,” referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 

On June 28, 2021, Morens complained that an April 2020 email between Daszak, Fauci and himself somehow fell into the hands of Congress probably through FOIA “of someone who didn’t delete it as I did … when the shit started hitting the fan.”

In the April 18, 2020 email, Daszak had thanked Fauci for combatting the lab-leak “myths.”

“I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Daszak wrote to Fauci.

“From my perspective, your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’ origins,” Daszak added in the redacted email.

After the email was exposed, Morens stressed again that his colleagues need to “delete all of Peter’s [Daszak’s] emails and others related to origin.”

“The best way to avoid FOIA hassles is to delete all emails when you learn a subject is getting sensitive,” he added.

On Oct. 5, 2021, in an email sent a month after documents were released providing evidence that NIH Director Francis Collins, and Fauci had lied about funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth, Daszak urged Morens to have “the NIH FoIA  group actually help reduce the scope and make some useful redactions” about the grant.

On Nov. 18, 2021, Morens said that with “the help of out IT folks,” his “gmail was now safe from FOIA and hacking” on all his devices so it was safe for them to communicate on sensitive subjects.

“I ask you both that NOTHING gets sent to me except to my gmail,” he said.

Morens also appeared to ask Daszak for monetary reimbursement after he had helped EcoHealth Alliance receive a $7.5 million grant in August of 2020, after former President Trump had put the kibosh on an earlier award.

The Trump administration’s cancelation of the grant prompted a manufactured “outcry over political interference” in the media.

The NIH went on to award the generous grant to EcoHealth and the co-conspirators reacted with glee.

“Ahem, do I get a kickback? “Too much fooking money!” Morens wrote to Daszak in the August 27,2020 email. “Do you deserve it all? Let’s discuss.”

Morens went on to congratulate Daszak, saying, “seriously, this is great news. Well deserved. There is still justice in a Trump-infected universe.”

“Very happy to see this announced today,” Daszak replied. “Just hoping the errant scheisters[sic] on One America News Network don’t start banging the drum so loud that the Orange Blob decides to decapitate this one also.” He added, “Of course there’s a kickback.”

The two may well have been joking about the “kickback.” The Subcommittee noted in their memo that they have not found evidence to confirm that a reimbursement  ever occurred, but said the email was “concerning.”

The Subcommittee memo also accuses Morens of “engaging in inappropriate and disrespectful behavior that is unbecoming of a representative of the United States Government.”

In July 2020, as COVID-19 was spreading throughout the United States, Morens joked about not working so hard to make his “boss look good,” and how he instead would “find a girlfriend,” “spring for a jacuzzi,” upgrade his wine cooler and get “a mattress that will take more of a pounding.”

In another email in December 2020, he said “Beverage is always good, best delivered by a blonde nymphomaniac…”

In November of 2021, he expressed doubts about the selection of Rochelle Walensky as CDC director.

“Well, she does wear a skirt…” he wrote. “I poured a little cold water on her.”

“Dr. Morens showed a concerning pattern of behavior that suggests he is not qualified to hold a position of public trust,” the memo states.

The report also accuses the doctor of lying to the Select Subcommittee.”

On December 22, 2023 and January 18, 2024, Dr. Morens testified at transcribed interviews before the Select Subcommittee.  At the interviews, Select Subcommittee counsel advised Dr. Morens that he was required pursuant to Title 18 Section 1001 of the United States Code to answer questions truthfully, including questions posed by Congressional staff in the interview, and that if he knowingly made false statements, he could be subject to criminal prosecution.  Dr. Morens stated, on the record, that he understood the requirement and the consequences of not complying with that requirement.

“The evidence presented throughout this memorandum establishes that Dr. Morens likely provided false testimony to the Select Subcommittee,” the memo states.

Morens,  who served under Fauci from 1998 to 2022, appeared before the subcommittee Wednesday afternoon to explain his alleged violations of federal record-keeping laws and attempts to obstruct the Subcommittee’s investigation into the government’s pandemic response.

The doctor told the committee that his references to a “secret backchannel” were just “jokes” to cheer Daszak up because he was receiving death threats.