David M. Morens, a senior scientific adviser at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and a prominent figure in the discussions about the origins of COVID-19, is facing scrutiny for using a personal email account to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regulations.
Evidence of Morens’s strategy was uncovered by congressional investigators examining the COVID origin story.
Morens, who served as a key adviser to Anthony Fauci at the NIH for 25 years, conveyed his intention to use his Gmail account for communication, citing incessant FOIA requests on his NIH email.
“As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly,” Morens wrote in a September 2021 email to a group of eminent scientists, according to a report from The Intercept.
Notably, this contradicts the footer under his signature line in the same email, which directs recipients to reply to his official NIAID email for US-government-related communication.
The group in communication with Morens includes leading scientists like Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, Robert Garry of Tulane University, Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney, Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, Angela Rasmussen from the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, and Bloomberg journalist Jason Gale.
These scientists are vocal advocates for the natural origin theory of COVID’s emergence.
Morens admitted that his Gmail account had been hacked, which might compel him to use his NIH account.
He assured the group he would delete any unwanted email, saying, “just send to any of my addresses, and I will delete anything I don’t want to see in the New York Times.”
Scott Amey, the general counsel at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, suggested that Morens’s conduct could potentially violate agency policies, including the Department of Health and Human Services’s email records management policy, as well as civil and criminal record retention laws.
“His comments in that email are certainly worth an investigation by the agency, the agency inspector general, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Department of Justice,” said Amey.
These email exchanges also revealed Morens and his fellow scientists’ disapproval of certain media outlets questioning the natural origin of COVID.
At one point, Morens suggested legal action against those they believed were slandering them, writing, “Do not rule out suing these assholes for slander.”
Furthermore, he criticized scientists who proposed alternative COVID origin theories, labeling them as “harmful demagogues.”
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, led by Rep. Brad Wenstrup, has raised serious concerns about Morens’s actions and has requested further records, including those from his personal email account.
“This is all very troubling,” Wenstrup wrote in a letter to Morens, expressing that the committee’s findings hint at Morens’s intention to sidestep transparency and FOIA rules, intentionally erasing federal records, and encouraging litigation against fellow scientists.
Ethics experts like Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, echoed these concerns, highlighting the damage to public trust and agency culture.
“When you evade laws that are meant to make government more transparent and accountable, that is very bad,” she stated. “The ethical implications are bad.”
