A scandal at the National Institutes of Health has come to a head in recent weeks, as new evidence has suggested that several top officials may have had a hand in thwarting investigations into the origins of COVID-19, drawing condemnation from Republicans and Democrats.
Although the inquiry has not produced any smoking gun regarding the origins of the virus, it has uncovered evidence of key players boasting about their ability to hide smoking guns from oversight. Subpoenaed emails have revealed a number of NIH officials and key players intentionally avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests by using misspelled keywords in searches, deleting government records, and using private email addresses for official business.
The recent developments follow a yearlong investigation into David Morens, the senior adviser to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, who also was a key figure in the government response to the pandemic and whose actions have been scrutinized by Republicans.
Emails uncovered by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic show Morens exclusively used his personal Gmail account to communicate with Peter Daszak, president of the nonprofit virus research firm EcoHealth Alliance, about COVID origins and government grants.
The affair could have serious implications for the credibility of Fauci, who is slated to testify before the select subcommittee next week.
Morens came under suspicion from the select subcommittee in June 2023 when emails recovered from his government address indicated that he encouraged colleagues to contact him via his personal Gmail account to avoid FOIA.
Morens wrote from his government email that he would “delete anything [he doesn’t] want to see in the New York Times,” prompting scrutiny from members of both parties on the Oversight Committee as well as the National Archives and Records Administration.
Morens started working as the senior adviser to Fauci at NIAID in 1998 following a career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Hawaii.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who sparred with Fauci before the Senate regarding controversial gain-of-function research, compared Morens to former President Donald Trump’s right-hand man Michael Cohen in that both men served as advisers and fixers behind the scenes.
“He’s there to keep a distance between Fauci and anything unseemly,” Paul said.
Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance have faced high levels of public scrutiny since the beginning of the COVID pandemic due to the organization’s work on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which many Republicans speculate to be the origin point of the virus. The work at the WIV was funded through an NIAID grant.
Morens has testified before Congress that he considers Daszak to be one of his “best friends,” and Daszak has referred to Morens as his “mentor.”
This close relationship between Morens and Daszak is central to the email scandal, as the uncovered communications show the two working to avoid records requests about EcoHealth’s work in Wuhan. Daszak also elicited help from Morens in getting the Wuhan grant reinstated after it was terminated by the Trump administration.
Messages from Morens’s private Gmail account were subpoenaed by the subcommittee following contradictions between Morens’s transcribed interview testimony from January and leaked emails directly from EcoHealth Alliance.
Morens testified to the subcommittee that much of the unprofessional content in the emails was written in jest to liven Daszak’s spirits after he and his family had received multiple credible death threats. Such content included misogynistic comments about former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and a “joke” about receiving a kickback from EcoHealth.
The spokesperson for EcoHealth has repeatedly maintained to the Washington Examiner that the research funded by NIH at the Wuhan Institute of Virology could not have led to the outbreak of COVID-19.
Emails subpoenaed by the select subcommittee in April and made public this month reveal several tactics that Morens and other NIH staff used to avoid FOIA requests.
“We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails,” Morens wrote to Daszak in June 2020, “and if we found them we’d delete them.”
The Gmail conversations demonstrate that Morens was actively involved in sharing information with Daszak about FOIA requests through NIH regarding grants to EcoHealth’s work at the Wuhan lab. Morens also aided Daszak with draft responses to FOIAs and explanations of the nonprofit group’s work.
Morens referenced, on multiple occasions in his emails, learning techniques to avoid public records requests from the agency’s so-called FOIA lady, Margaret Moore, who recently retired from the agency. He also said Moore “hates FOIAs.”
The senior adviser also said he learned techniques from the NIH information technology department to avoid FOIA, as well as opened an encrypted Protonmail account.
“The best way to avoid FOIA hassles is to delete all emails when you learn a subject is getting sensitive,” Morens advised Daszak and former NIH employee Gerald Keusch.
One of the tactics used to avoid FOIAs uncovered by the select subcommittee was intentionally misspelling key words typically asked for in FOIA searches. Email evidence shows that Fauci’s chief of staff, Greg Folkers, intentionally misspelled EcoHealth and other critical search terms for FOIAs regarding COVID-19 origins.
This information led subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) to contact current NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli regarding the agency’s records retention policies.
“In my 22 years at NIAID I have never seen a FOIA that turned up useful information,” Morens wrote in June 2020.
Although the documents uncovered do not directly implicate Fauci in any impropriety, they do suggest that Morens intentionally shielded Fauci from ties to compromising situations.
Emails from April 2021 show Daszak asked Morens to show documents to Fauci over a Zoom call instead of including them as an email attachment in order to avoid a papertrail. Morens said that this strategy “should be very helpful.”
Morens also requested in April 2021 that Daszak speak directly with Fauci in a way that is “not FoIA-able.” They both agreed that a Zoom call would be the best forum.
“We are getting FOIA’d non stop,” Morens wrote, “so it’s most important that Tony not have anything on the record that could come back to bite.”
Other conversations include Morens reassuring Daszak that Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins were doing their best to protect EcoHealth as well as minimize any damage done to the agency itself.
“From Tony’s numerous recent comments to me and from what Francis has been vocal about over the past 5 days, they are trying to protect you,” Morens wrote to Daszak in October 2021, “which also protects their own reputations.”
The email scandal will likely be only one of many topics discussed in the public hearing of Fauci before the select subcommittee next week, but it may be the only one with bipartisan support.
Morens faced significant scrutiny from both parties when testifying before the select subcommittee earlier this month, with both sides interested in holding him accountable for the erosion of public trust in government health agencies.
Subcommittee Republicans and Paul have separately referred Morens to the Department of Justice for potential criminal charges, including conspiracy, destruction of government records, and lying to Congress.
Tim Belevetz, partner at the Washington, D.C.-area law firm IceMiller representing Morens, told the Washington Examiner that his client has always taken his role as a public servant seriously.
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“Dr. Morens has a demonstrated record of high quality and important contributions to science and to public service,” he said.
Belevetz declined the opportunity for an interview with the Washington Examiner. An attorney for Fauci, David Schertler of Schertler, Onorato, Mead, and Sears LLP, also declined a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.