The EcoHealth Alliance’s own study organization voluntarily released its own emails on Friday confirming that the most sensible adviser to then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci had used his private Gmail account to conduct cases related to the origins of COVID-19.
The release of the emails follows a letter sent through the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic to former National Institutes of Health worker Gerald Keusch regarding several of his email exchanges with Fauci adviser David Morens and the president of EcoHealth, Peter Daszak.
The release of the emails is notable because it corroborates accusations by congressional Republicans that more sensible NIAID officials may have violated the federal records act in the early stages of the pandemic. Morens had continually denied allegations that he had sent government documents to his private email. deal with circumventing Freedom of Information Act requests and other controls.
An email posted through EcoHealth on April 26, 2020 and timestamped at 3:32 p. m. from Daszak to Morens emphasizes that he will now “communicate with [Morens] Gmail,” confirming that Morens has asked to talk about COVID-19 only on people who are not government platforms.
“I understand exactly what you say in your email, I agree and we’re going to stick to precisely that line,” Daszak also told Morens.
EcoHealth published the email Morens sent to Daszak that prompted this response.
Morens has been under investigation through the subcommittee and the National Archives and Records Administration since June, following the release of emails dated September 2021 from Morens’ account at the NIH, encouraging his colleagues to use government addresses to circumvent firm surveillance.
Morens also wrote in 2021 that he would “delete everything you don’t need to see in the New York Times” from his government accounts.
The subcommittee showed the Washington Examiner on Thursday that it had the text of the emails between Morens, Keusch and Daszak. The subcommittee responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment at the time of publication.
EcoHealth, a nonprofit that conducts studies on viruses with the goal of preventing pandemics, has come under close scrutiny since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, in part because of its work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
Emails released through EcoHealth imply that the grant “Understanding the Risk of Coronavirus Emergence in Bats” was briefly halted through the NIH due to biosecurity considerations and that Daszak is running with Morens and Keusch to revive the project.
“Contrary to the reports, they make clear that EcoHealth Alliance was communicating appropriately with senior NIH staff, or those formerly working at NIH, to try to identify tactics to reinstate a grant that had been arbitrarily terminated and then suspended with onerous conditions,” the EcoHealth spokesperson wrote in a press release accompanying the emails.
Daszak wrote to Morens and Keusch in the April 2020 email that increased public scrutiny of his organization is “an incredibly stressful factor at almost every single level. “
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“We are being through extremists, supported by the president [Donald Trump], who is shockingly ignorant and detached from the harm his movements are causing to people’s lives and to our own American national security,” Daszak wrote.
Daszak is scheduled to testify at a public hearing before the subcommittee on May 1.