Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the President in 2021 to 2022, and who was in charge of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, is scheduled to testify before a GOP-led committee on Monday for the first time in almost two years. The House Select Subcommittee is expected to question him about allegations of misconduct that he allegedly committed while leading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Fauci last gave a testimony in front of Congress in September 2022, when he and other health authorities spoke before the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee about the response to the mpox response.
The committee is requesting that Dr. Fauci provide his personal email and mobile phone data from the time he led the US response to the outbreak. One of his former advisors has already been questioned by them on dubious transparency procedures at the National Institutes of Health.
In communications received by the committee, Dr. David Morens, a career federal scientist currently on administrative leave, revealed how he used a personal email account and deleted messages to avoid having contact disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act.
Emails from Morens have revealed that Fauci was aware of public records violations at NIAID and attempted to distance himself from it. In a late-May session with parliamentarians, Dr. Morens expressed regret for his “snarky and profane comments,” saying he believed that “it was on my private email in a manner that was just between a small group of friends.”
The $49 billion National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest funder of scientific research, is the target of unusually intense bipartisan criticism. The panel has proposed term restrictions for administrators such as Fauci himself, who oversaw the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an NIH component, from 1984 to 2022, and has called for increased external scrutiny of the NIH.
