Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to open a criminal investigation into the alleged use of private emails for government business by David Morens, senior adviser to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci.
Paul’s letter to Garland on Wednesday morning comes only hours before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is to hear the first public testimony of Morens to address his use of a private Gmail account for NIH business in order to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests and other public oversight.
“Emails obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic provide significant evidence that Dr. Morens unlawfully destroyed federal records relating to the origins of COVID-19 and improperly used his personal email address to evade federal records laws,” Paul wrote. “It is imperative that your Department investigate the allegations against Dr. Morens and, if substantiated, ensure that he is held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Last summer, the select subcommittee uncovered emails sent to colleagues by Morens in 2021 instructing them to contact him via his personal Gmail account because his government email was “FOIA’d constantly.” He also assured colleagues that he would “delete anything [he did not] want to see in the New York Times.”
Further emails from Morens’s private email account subpoenaed by the subcommittee show that Morens requested assistance from the NIH’s FOIA request officer in avoiding public records demands.
Paul quoted an email from Morens to nonprofit research organization EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak saying that he learned from NIH staff “how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA but before the search starts.”
“We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails. And if we found them we’d delete them,” Morens wrote to Daszak, according to Paul’s letter.
Daszak and EcoHealth have been implicated in misusing grant funding from the NIH designated for coronavirus research projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which some Republicans have said may have been the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both EcoHealth and Daszak have been suspended from federal funding by the Department of Health and Human Services and are awaiting debarment proceedings, which would prohibit them from all federal dollars for at least three years.
Select Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview that his committee intended to consult with the DOJ regarding potential charges against Morens for destruction of public records and for lying to Congress.
“As we go through it and learn more, we may make some criminal referrals,” Wenstrup said. “Hopefully we have a Department of Justice that’s willing to act when laws have been violated.”
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Paul requested information from the DOJ as to whether the department has opened an investigation into Morens and whether they have received referrals related to allegations against Morens from other government agencies, including the NIH and HHS.
Morens has been on administrative leave since last fall but is still an NIH employee.
