Congressional investigators are zeroing in on top public health officials’s apparent attempts to evade federal records requests on communications about issues central to the public’s understanding of the coronavirus pandemic.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is opening an investigation into a potential conspiracy by officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), particularly senior officials at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records requests. The investigation is based on emails obtained through a subpoena last month to top NIAID official Dr. David Morens.

“The evidence taken together suggests a conspiracy at the highest levels of NIH and NIAID to avoid public transparency regarding the COVID-19 pandemic,” subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio) wrote in a letter on Tuesday to NIH director Monica Bertagnolli.

“If what appears in these documents is true, this is an apparent attack on public trust and must be met with swift enforcement and consequences for those involved.”

The letter contains emails between Morens and disgraced EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak, an outside party, on the internal FOIA deliberations happening at NIH in January 2022. Morens let Daszak know he received a FOIA from watchdog group U.S. Right to Know for Morens’s communications with EcoHealth, a nonprofit supposedly dedicated to fighting diseases.

“I hope NIH can reduce the amount that comes out,” Daszak said, while admitting some of their correspondence was “embarrassing,” because it criticized proponents of the lab leak theory of coronavirus origins.

Another email in the letter appears to show Morens describing how the NIH’s “foia lady” taught him how to make emails “disappear” after becoming subject to a FOIA search. Morens suggested he deleted a tranche of emails after sending them to his Gmail account.

In addition, Greg Folkers, the former chief of staff to former NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci, seems to have intentionally misspelled words to avoid FOIA scrutiny. Folkers sent an email on June 7, 2021, with the subject line “anders$n,” a reference to virologist Kristian Andersen, a co-author of a widely influential Nature paper published at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic to discredit the lab leak theory.

Fauci orchestrated the infamous “Proximal Origin” paper with assistance from then–NIH director Francis Collins, the subcommittee concluded last year. Collins testified earlier this year and now admits the origins of coronavirus are not settled science, as National Review first reported.

Days before the “anders$n” email, Folkers sent an email discussing lab biosafety standards and the risks of potential spillover from a lab. When referencing EcoHealth, Folkers wrote “Ec~Health” in an apparently intentional misspelling.

Due to these emails, the covid subcommittee is seeking a briefing from NIH on its FOIA practices no later than June 4.

“HHS doesn’t comment on personnel matters. HHS is committed to the letter and spirit of the Freedom of Information Act and adherence to Federal records management requirements. It is HHS policy that all personnel conducting business for, and on behalf of, HHS refrain from using personal email accounts to conduct HHS business,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told NR.

The NIH and NIAID are part of HHS. The department plans on issuing a direct response to Wenstrup’s inquiry, the spokesperson said.

HHS recently suspended taxpayer funding to EcoHealth and initiated debarment proceedings against EcoHealth and Daszak because of the organization’s lack of transparency surrounding its partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on bat coronavirus research. Debarring EcoHealth as an organization and Daszak personally would prevent either of them from receiving taxpayer funding for any projects moving forward.

In a report published on May 1, the subcommittee recommended a criminal investigation into Daszak, in addition to debarment proceedings against EcoHealth. The Wuhan lab is the location where lab leak proponents believe the coronavirus pandemic originated, and intelligence officials have said the lab is linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army.

Daszak testified earlier this month and defended his organization’s work, including the bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan lab, by rejecting characterizations of it as gain-of-function research meant to enhance bat coronaviruses.

Morens testified last week on using his personal email and deleting official communications, while apparently advising Fauci and Daszak to do the same. Before the hearing, Daszak and Morens seemed to discuss delay tactics Morens’s attorney used to unsuccessfully push his hearing past Fauci’s scheduled public testimony on June 3.

At the hearing, Morens claimed his emails were jokes and said he did not realize they were official government communications.