Congressional investigators have subpoenaed an embattled senior official at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to have him publicly testify after he appeared to use delay tactics to push back the hearing.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic subpoenaed Dr. David Morens on Wednesday and accused Morens of deliberately delaying his public testimony.
“However, your unwillingness to seriously cooperate with our requests, negotiate a reasonable date, and produce all the responsive documents in your possession has unreasonably delayed our investigation. Your apparently improper attempts to hinder the Select Subcommittee’s investigation are unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio.) wrote in a subpoena cover letter.
The cover letter contains an email by embattled Dr. Peter Daszak, president of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), where Daszak indicated Morens was attempting to delay his hearing past the scheduled public testimony of former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, for whom Morens was a top adviser.
“Each day of delay helps. They’re trying to book David in for a public hearing between mine (May 1) and Fauci’s (June 3). David’s lawyers are trying to negotiate and delay his til after Tony,” Daszak wrote to colleagues last month.
A spokesperson for EHA declined to comment when contacted for this story. National Review has reached out to the NIAID for comment.
Days later, Morens’s lawyer told the subcommittee he was “unavailable” on the proposed date of the hearing and proposed unsuitable alternatives. The same result occurred when the subcommittee proposed an alternative date later this month, the cover letter says.
“The emails in possession of the Select Subcommittee call your stated unavailability into question,” the letter adds.
Daszak testified earlier this month and faced a barrage of questions from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike over EHA’s lack of transparency and the bat coronavirus research it oversaw at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab where coronavirus is suspected to have originated. Before Daszak’s testimony started, the subcommittee released a report recommending that he face a criminal investigation and that EHA no longer receive government funding.
“I expect that there will be some with Peter Daszak that he hasn’t brought forward to us. We’ll find out,” Wenstrup told National Review shortly after Daszak’s testimony.
The subcommittee subpoenaed Morens last month for emails from his personal Gmail account after EHA disclosed communications between Morens and Daszak where they appeared to discuss coronavirus origins and corresponding with Morens’s personal email. Before the disclosure, a whistleblower came forward and accused Morens of using his private account to subvert federal records laws.
Last year, emails were released where Morens appeared to advise colleagues on using a private email account to avoid Freedom of Information Act records requests. Wenstrup revealed at Daszak’s hearing that Morens turned over 30,000 pages of emails in compliance with the subpoena.
In addition to Morens’s emails, the subcommittee continues to investigate whether the coronavirus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Wenstrup wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday after viewing classified documents provided by the department, lending credibility to the lab leak theory of coronavirus origins. The documents appeared to show coronavirus originated from an accidental leak at the Wuhan lab and that the Chinese Communist Party covered it up.
“We write to you today to request that you immediately take steps to declassify this information such that the American people have a more complete picture of the government’s evidence regarding the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Wenstrup urged.
He also noted the ties between the Wuhan lab and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a relationship Daszak denied knowing about.
“WIV personnel have worked with scientists associated with the PLA on public health-related research and collaborated on biosafety and biosecurity projects. Information available to the IC indicates that some of the research conducted by the PLA and WIV included work with several viruses, including coronaviruses,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence observed in a report produced last year.
Highly redacted versions of the State Department documents were previously released after a FOIA request by U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit investigative group that specializes in corporate and government misconduct across the medical profession.
Assessments by the FBI and Department of Energy have determined the coronavirus most likely originated in the Wuhan lab.