House Republicans are probing the emails sent on private accounts between a high-ranking official with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a top epidemiologist at Boston University following whistleblower testimony regarding an alleged cover-up of the origins of COVID-19.
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic was alerted by a whistleblower close to the matter of email communications in 2020 between David Morens, the top aide to then-NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, and Gerald Keusch, an epidemiologist and associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Boston University.
The subcommittee began investigating Morens last June after uncovering that Morens intentionally used his personal Gmail account to conduct official NIH business to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests on sensitive information. Morens also told colleagues that he would “delete anything [he didn’t] want to see in the New York Times” from his government account.
When Morens spoke with the subcommittee during a transcribed interview in January, Morens denied deleting any information regarding COVID origins from his government account and forwarding federal records to his personal account to avoid FOIA requests.
The emails between Keusch and Morens also included Peter Daszak, the president of the virus research organization EcoHealth Alliance, whom Morens told the subcommittee is a “close friend.”
The subcommittee was provided time stamps and subject lines for four emails between Morens, Keusch, and Daszak regarding an EcoHealth project funded by NIH titled “Understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence.”
Two of the emails from Morens to Daszak and Keusch, both sent on April 26, 2020, request confirmation of receipt and say “actions needed” regarding the controversial grant project. Another email, sent by Morens on July 13, 2020, has the subject line “China, SARS-CoV2 origin, animal reservoir, WHO mission.”
The fourth email, sent from Morens to the research pair on Feb. 20, 2022, says in the subject line that the NIH program official overseeing the project, Erik Stemmy, is “unable to talk with [Daszak] anymore” about the bat coronavirus project, which had at that point been suspended.
Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) wrote in a letter to Keusch that the panel is unclear about “the extent of [his] communication with Dr. Morens, or others within the Federal government.”
Keusch, trained at Columbia College and Harvard Medical School in the 1960s, began his career at an NIH International Career Development Program in Southeast Asia. From 1998 to 2003, Keusch served as the director of the John E. Fogarty International Center with the NIH, overseeing international medical and behavioral research. In 2003, Keusch left government service to join the faculty of Boston University’s School of Public Health.
Keusch and Daszak, along with other researchers, have published five papers together regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the public health lessons to be drawn from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, or NEIDL, at Boston University does not list Keusch as affiliated faculty or leadership, but the Boston University medical school directory lists Keusch as a professor emeritus, typically designating a semiretired position in academia.
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The subcommittee is likely to ask Daszak about the email exchanges between himself, Keusch, and Morens when Daszak testifies in a public hearing before the subcommittee on May 1.
The Washington Examiner asked EcoHealth Alliance and Boston University for comment.