Originally published July 11, 2023 7:29 am PDT
In a stunning revelation from a probe initiated by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, 14 senior officials from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, may have served unlawfully in their positions from December 2021 to June 2023.
Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) revealed on Monday that these officials were not correctly reappointed as necessitated by law in December 2021.
“We have uncovered that @SecBecerra failed to follow the Constitution and the law to reappoint top NIH officials when their terms expired in December 2021,” Rep. Rodgers tweeted on Sunday. “As a result, 14 NIH officials held unlawful positions and exercised authority they didn’t have.”
The investigation, initiated in March 2022, was a joint effort by Subcommittee on Health Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA).
In an exclusive report by CBS, it was detailed how the Biden administration potentially failed to correctly reappoint these top-ranking NIH leaders, raising significant concerns over the legitimacy of billions in federal grants authorized by these officials over the past year.
“The failure to reappoint the above NIH IC Directors jeopardizes the legal validity of more than $25 billion in federal biomedical research grants made in 2022 alone,” the committee highlighted in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra.
The letter also questioned the Secretary’s failure to comply with the law, and the subsequent accountability of billions of dollars in taxpayer funding.
The committee specifically drew attention to the former NIAID Director, stating, “Given his central role in the COVID-19 response, the Committee is particularly concerned about the failure to reappoint Dr. Fauci. Without reappointment, Dr. Fauci continued to serve as NIAID Director until his retirement on December 31, 2022. If Dr. Fauci was never reappointed, every action he took is potentially invalid.”
The committee also expressed grave concerns over possible misleading by the HHS and the NIH, stating, “We also intend to get a full accounting of who at HHS and the NIH decided to mislead the Committee and why. HHS and the NIH’s bad faith and failure to follow the law in this matter epitomizes why Americans no longer trust federal public health agencies.”
The core of the issue lies within the U.S. Constitution and the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016.
Under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, NIH IC Directors are classified as inferior officers of the United States.
The 21st Century Cures Act, passed with robust bipartisan support, stipulates the process for appointing and reappointing NIH IC Directors.
It requires the Secretary of HHS to reappoint NIH IC Directors at the expiration of their five-year term, which, for these directors, ended on December 12, 2021.
The failure to comply with these procedures has put the validity of all decisions made by these directors between December 2021 and June 2023 under scrutiny, including the approval of billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants and COVID-19-related guidance.
The committee intends to press for greater accountability and transparency in response to these revelations.
Read the full letter to Becerra below:
