Fauci denies using private email to circumvent FOIA
Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a hearing led by the GOP Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, denies using his private email for official government affairs. While a former adviser mentioned a ”secret back channel,” Fauci admits possibly communicating on personal email for collaborative chapters, distancing himself from the advisor’s actions. The Subcommittee investigates these claims and Fauci’s involvement.
Dr. Anthony Fauci claimed on Monday he did not recall using his private email to conduct official government business.
The longtime health official dismissed the notion during a hearing of the GOP-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which is seeking access to his personal accounts as part of an investigation into the origins of the COVID pandemic.
“To the best of my recollection and knowledge I have never conducted official business via my private email,” Fauci testified.
Dr. Fauci claims he never conducted government business on private email:@RepJamesComer: “did you ever conduct official business via email?”
Fauci: “To the best of my recollection and knowledge I have never conducted official business via my private email.” pic.twitter.com/Tk2sWtO9VS
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 3, 2024
Emails show Dr. David Morens, Fauci’s former senior adviser, discussed a “‘secret’ back channel” and suggested that Fauci used a private account to get around Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Morens also testified to the subcommittee last month that he “may have” sent information related to COVID-19 to Fauci’s personal email account.
Fauci, a longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and former chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, conceded that it was possible he spoke to Morens through a private channel in some context.
“It might have been because … one of his functions is to write chapters — medical, scientific chapters — with me,” Fauci said. “So it is conceivable that I communicated with him on my private email when we were writing a chapter. And that was not official business.”
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has expressed concern that Fauci not only knew about the activity Morens described in emails and testimony but also participated in the same behavior.
Fauci distanced himself from Morens, saying in his opening statement that he “knew nothing” of his former aide using a personal email account or deleting emails to avoid FOIA requests, and he denied the use of a back channel at NIAID.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, made a request to Fauci last week for communications from Fauci’s personal email accounts and cell phone records by June 12.
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Responsive documents would relate to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, EcoHealth Alliance, Inc., the origins of COVID-19, or congressional oversight of these issues between January 1, 2020, and the present.
In recent weeks, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cut off EcoHealth Alliance and its president, Peter Daszak, from taxpayer funds amid scrutiny of the group’s support of coronavirus research in China that may have resulted in a lab leak.
Daszak was a recipient of the emails in which Morens spoke about bypassing the FOIA process and covert back channel.
Fauci acknowledged that he may have spoken about Daszak with Morens because EcoHealth was a grantee, but pushed back on the suggestion that he sought to protect the virus research group and insisted that he did not use a private email to message Daszak.
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