House GOP Contemplating Legal Action Against Fauci Aide

Republican lawmakers are contemplating suggesting criminal charges against the former Senior Adviser to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, David Morens.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has been focusing on Morens since June, when it was revealed that he used his personal Gmail account for official COVID-19 business to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Morens is slated to testify publicly before Congress for the first time on Wednesday, and he did not provide a written opening statement before the hearing, as reported by the Examiner.

“At the very least, he misled Congress during his transcribed interview,” Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, told the Examiner. “Lying to Congress is a felony.

“As we gather more information, we may make some criminal referrals. Hopefully, we have a Department of Justice that is willing to act when laws have been violated.”

Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., told Newsmax last week that he believes Fauci lied to Congress regarding government funding at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

“I believe, based on the evidence we have seen, that he lied to Congress,” McCormick said on “The Record With Greta Van Susteren.”

Fauci is scheduled to testify before the subcommittee on June 3.

The subcommittee’s investigation into EcoHealth has led to accusations that the nonprofit organization intentionally misled the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about the nature of experiments being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

EcoHealth, which used NIH grants for coronavirus research, allegedly failed to report potentially hazardous pathogen research at the lab to U.S. authorities.

The FBI had previously determined that the most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic was an accidental lab leak.

EcoHealth President Peter Daszak is a close associate of Morens, who likely advised Fauci to approve the grant for EcoHealth to collaborate with Wuhan scientists on bat coronaviruses.

Emails between Morens and Daszak on Morens’ personal email account indicate that the NIH employee “was clearly attempting to assist [Daszak] in finding ways to have his grant reinstated” after the EcoHealth project at the Wuhan lab was halted by the Trump administration in 2020, Wenstrup informed the Examiner.

The subcommittee discovered emails sent by Morens in 2021 instructing colleagues to use his personal Gmail address to avoid FOIA requests and that he would “delete anything [he doesn’t] want to see in The New York Times.”