Clermont Times

Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) is investigating a potential conspiracy at the highest levels of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), specifically within the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Evidence suggests NIH officials received instructions on how to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and avoid public transparency related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Newly uncovered documents show that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Senior Advisor, Dr. David Morens, consulted with the NIH FOIA office on best practices for deleting official records. In one email, Dr. Morens wrote, “i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear.” The documents also indicate that Dr. Morens gave his “best friend” and controversial NIH grant recipient, EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. (EcoHealth) President Dr. Peter Daszak, preferential treatment by forwarding him potentially damaging FOIA productions prior to public release. In their correspondence, Dr. Morens and Dr. Daszak mention that their emails may suggest they were “‘conspiring’ together in some way.”

Further evidence shows that Dr. Fauci’s former Chief of Staff, Greg Folkers, utilized FOIA evading tactics by strategically misspelling words. This tactic ensures that when the NIH searches its email server for key words responsive to a FOIA request, Mr. Folkers’s emails containing misspelled keywords are not identified or produced as responsive documents. In one email produced to the Select Subcommittee through a subpoena, Mr. Folkers appears to have purposefully misspelled “EcoHealth” as “Ec~Health.”

Although the NIH claims it conducted a thorough investigation into Dr. Morens's actions, these evasive tactics — along with previously uncovered evidence that Dr. Morens began using a Proton Mail account after his Gmail was probed by the Select Subcommittee — raise serious concerns about whether important information was overlooked in NIH's investigation.

Chairman Wenstrup is requesting a staff-level briefing on the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) investigation into Dr. Morens and offering NARA access to all documents related to this investigation in possession of the Select Subcommittee.

In response to new evidence suggesting a potentially orchestrated cover-up by the NIH FOIA office, Chairman Wenstrup is also requesting an immediate briefing from NIH staff on its record retention and transparency policies.

Read Chairman Wenstrup’s letter to NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli here.

Read Chairman Wenstrup’s letter NARA here.

Read More: Select Subcommittee Holds a Public Hearing with Dr. Fauci’s Senior Advisor, Dr. David Morens