One of the National Institute of Health’s top advisers lied to the public, deleting records on and communicating through back channels about the origins of COVID-19.

From New York Post. A top adviser at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) deleted records critical to uncovering the origins of COVID-19 — and used a “secret back channel” to help Dr. Anthony Fauci and a federal grantee that funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, evade transparency.

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NIH senior adviser Dr. David Morens improperly conducted official government business from his private email account and solicited help from the NIH’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office to dodge records requests, according to emails revealed in a memo by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which The Post obtained Wednesday. …

“I ask you both that NOTHING gets sent to me except to my gmail [sic],” he emphasized … in a Nov. 18, 2021, email to EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak, whose organization was suspended this month from receiving federal funds for the next three years and who was himself proposed for debarment on Wednesday.

In the most shocking exchange, on May 28, 2021, NIH’s Office of the General Counsel instructed the agency’s FOIA office to “not release anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/WIV,” referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. …

“We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them,” read a June 16, 2020, email sent just two months after EcoHealth’s Wuhan grant was initially suspended. …

On Oct. 5, 2021, in an email sent days before the NIH would acknowledge EcoHealth funded the risky virus experiments in Wuhan, Daszak leaned on Morens to have “the NIH FoIA [sic] group actually help reduce the scope and make some useful redactions” about the grant.

The 35-page memo by subcommittee majority staff also suggests Fauci, Morens’ former boss at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), participated “in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels” of the agency to “hide” and potentially “destroy official records regarding the origins of COVID-19.”

Morens appeared before the subcommittee Wednesday afternoon to testify about his boasts of destroying “smoking gun” emails about the COVID-19 pandemic …

Both Republicans and Democrats on the panel were united in their denunciations of Morens.

“The information contained in these 30,000 pages of emails are deeply concerning, and in my opinion reflects poorly upon Dr. Morens and the Office of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease under Dr. Fauci’s leadership and the NIH under Dr. Francis Collins,” Subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) said in his opening remarks. …

Morens, who is currently on administrative leave, characterized the emails as “snarky” and “profane” — but repeatedly said he could not recall the circumstances behind the messages as members read them into the congressional record.

The NIAID senior scientific adviser even laughed off damning emails of his “back channel” talks with Fauci as a “joke” and insisted they had nothing to do with FOIA queries. …

When pressed, Morens denied several times that he conducted official business on his personal email account or deleted records, only to later hedge his remarks and point to his efforts to defend Daszak against death threats. …

“I believe you have lied here today to Congress,” said an equally bewildered Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.). …

Alarmingly, the emails released Wednesday show Morens lightheartedly discussed getting “a kickback” for his assistance to the disgraced Manhattan-based EcoHealth Alliance, which funded experiments on novel bat coronaviruses at the WIV between 2014 and 2021. …

When asked after the hearing whether Morens opened himself to criminal prosecution based on his false statements, Wenstrup told reporters: “Yes.”

Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, agreed Morens should be referred for prosecution based on his “conspiracy to defraud, obstruction of investigation, misuse of federal resources, and perjury.”

“More important, the series of email messages read by Reps. Debbie Lesko and Rich McCormick [R-Ga.] strongly suggest that Morens committed these crimes on behalf of, and with the knowledge, approval, and participation of, his supervisor, former NIAID Director Fauci,” Ebright added. …

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(Excerpt from New York Post. Photo Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)