Lawmakers grilled Dr. David Morens, a Senior Advisor to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), over his apparent attempts to circumvent FOIA requests during a Wednesday testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Committee Chair Republican Ohio Rep. Brad Wenstrup opened the hearing by citing e-mails Morens wrote in 2021 where he appeared to tout his use of backdoor channels to communicate with Fauci.
“On April 21, 2021, you wrote ‘I can either send stuff to Tony [Fauci] on his private e-mail or hand it to him at work or at his house,’” Wenstrup read. “On May 13, 2021, you wrote that you connected a reporter to Dr. Fauci via your ‘secret backchannel.’ What backchannel did you have for Dr. Fauci?”
Morens brushed off the e-mails, claiming they were just jokes. “All these terms like secret backchannel and the other one you mentioned were just jokes. Jokes that I made in dealing with Peter [Daszak] because he was under death threats and very depressed,” Morens replied.
“There was no backchannel,” he continued. “The backchannel was, uh, the backchannel to Tony was the same one that applies to everybody.”
Lawmakers pressed him