A high-level advisor to Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a department within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), appears to have attempted to avoid transparency by using his personal email and deleting correspondence related to the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, emails sent in a memo from the US House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic show.
David Morens, senior advisor to the director of NIAID since 1998, wrote on February 24, 2021, that he “learned from our FOIA gal here how to make most emails disappear after I’m subpoenaed but before the search begins.” , so I think we’re all safe,” adding that he “deleted most of those previous emails after sending them to Gmail.” [Nota do Tradutor: FOIA significa Freedom Of Information Act, lei americana semelhante à Lei de Acesso à Informação brasileira. Ou seja, o assessor de Fauci está dizendo que burlou a lei americana para não enviar os emails requisitos via FOIA]
In November of that year, Morens wrote that “your Gmail is now safe from FOIA” and asked that “NOTHING be sent to me except to my Gmail.” He previously wrote that he “learned the ropes last year from an old friend, Marg Moore, who heads our FOIA office and also hates FOIAs.”
In a June 16, 2020, email, Morens wrote that “we are all smart enough to know never to have smoking guns, and if we did, we wouldn’t put them in emails, and if we found them, we would delete them.”
Many of the communications released by the committee were between Morens and EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, the leader of the nonprofit who oversaw bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Daszak testified before the committee in early May in a widely scrutinized appearance, after which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suspended government funding for his organization.
Emails published in the committee memo show Morens helping Daszak edit a letter in response to news of the first NIH termination of the EcoHealth grant in 2020, writing that he had “attached some edits for consideration” and thought the letter highlighted “ the right points” and presented “a solid case”.
Later, Morens wrote a letter to EcoHealth board member Nancye Green on Daszak’s behalf, trying to ensure Daszak’s job security. He wrote that he wanted to “put in a good word for Peter and the team at EcoHealth, and all the great work they have done,” but that he and Green had “to keep all such communications to private emails so that cannot be retrieved via FOIA.”
Morens also wrote about a “secret communication channel” to help Fauci and Daszak prevent their communications from surfacing and said he could “either send things to Tony on his private Gmail, or give them to him at work or his home,” adding that Fauci was “too smart to let colleagues send him things that could get him in trouble.”
In August 2020, once EcoHealth’s grant from the NIH was restored, Morens asked Daszak if he would receive a “payback” for defending Daszak, to which the EcoHealth president responded, “of course there is a payback.” Much of the correspondence between the two involved Morens providing Daszak with information about the status of the NIH grant to EcoHealth.
Morens testified in front of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic this Wednesday (22) afternoonclaiming that his references to the “secret communication channel” and “feedback” were merely jokes and saying that he did not realize that the emails he sent from his personal account constituted official government business.
He said the mention of a “comeback” was simply “typical dark humor between people like Peter and I and others who appear in these emails.”
“I didn’t do anything that I thought was official business,” Morens told the committee. “I understand now that there is some discrepancy between what I thought and what you might think about what is official business” and that he “thought that all these things [que] was doing from [seu] private email – private Gmail – were outside the realm of my official work as a private citizen.”
When Representative Jill Tokuda (Democratic Party, Hawaii) directly asked Morens whether he had ever “conducted government business through his personal email accounts,” Morens maintained that he had no understanding that such communications were within his capacity as government employee.
“Some of the emails I’ve seen that you’ve provided look pretty incriminating,” Morens told the committee. “I don’t know what they are. I don’t remember them. But yes, it appears I made a mistake on more than one occasion, but it certainly wasn’t my intention to do so.”
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) then read a list of Morens’ emails and asked if he would like to change his previous statement that he did not intentionally use his personal email to conduct government business.
“The context is that this Gmail communication was set up purely to deal with personal things that were not government business,” Morens responded, to Lesko’s disbelief.
“With all due respect, how can you say that when you clearly know that all of these emails were intentionally avoiding FOIA?” Lesko asked. “You said it in your own words, sir.”
©2024 National Review. Published with permission. Original in English: Fauci Lieutenant Intentionally Hid Emails to Avoid Transparency, Coronavirus Subcommittee Memo Shows
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