Weekend Read: House Oversight Emails Suggest National Institute of Health’s “FOIA Lady” Advised Fauci Aide to Circumvent FOIA Requests

Dr. David Morens is sworn in before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing on May 22, 2024. Photo copyright Andrew Harnik.

According to subpoenaed emails released last week by a House Oversight Committee investigation, a former FOIA public liaison at the National Institute of Health advised colleagues on how to sidestep federal records requirements.

The released emails reveal that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Senior Scientific Advisor, Dr. David Morens, consulted with the NIH FOIA office to evade public records laws in the face of scrutiny over the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Morens testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last week.

“I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make e-mails disappear after I’m FOIA’d but before the search starts so I think we’re all safe,” Morens wrote in one email in February 2021. “Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to my gmail,” Morens added, referring to his personal Gmail account.

The emails don’t reference the NIAID FOIA office or FOIA public liaison by name, but chairman of the full Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) confirmed with Morens during the hearing that the “foia lady” was Margaret Moore. In another email to Gerald Keusch, a scientist and former NIH official, Morens wrote “It’s more in the line of govt secret, but too complicated to explain in an email. But I learned the tricks last year from an old friend, Marge Moore, who leads our FOIA office and also hates FOIAs.” Moore has since retired from NIAID.

During the hearing, Morens claimed that he did not realize emails from his government account constituted federal records. In another 2021 email, however, he wrote “We’re all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns and we wouldn’t put them in e-mails and if we found them we would delete them.”

Although the select subcommittee is sharply divided on the origins of COVID-19, both Republicans and Democrats on the House Subcommittee rebuked Moren, calling his move a “blatant disregard for transparency obligations under the FOIA,” and a “disdain for the Freedom of Information Act.” Lawmakers have also promised to expand their investigation that turned up the emails, accusing officials at the NIH of orchestrating “a conspiracy at the highest levels” of the agency to hide public records. Calls for an expanded inquiry come just days before a House panel publicly questions Dr. Anthony Fauci over the pandemic’s origins.

The House Investigation raises serious concerns about the NIH office’s practice of “making records disappear” including the extent to which tactics such as “purposely misspelling search terms” have been used. It is the responsibility of a FOIA public liaison and an agency’s FOIA Office to increase transparency and understanding of the status of requests, assist in reducing request delays, and resolve disputes between the requester and the agency—not obfuscate government wrongdoings. If true, the findings from the investigation may further erode public trust in government integrity, as well as potentially fuel continued conspiracy theories on the origins of the COVID-19 virus. At present, it is also unclear if the National Archives will get involved and conduct its own investigation regarding the NIH’s document retention, transparency, FOIA, and personal email policies.