A watchdog group is accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of having lied to Congress last month when he claimed he never used private email to conduct official business, pointing to newly obtained records on the “Beaglegate” scandal – though his attorney has denied all wrongdoing.
Fauci, 83, told a journalist in October 2021 that he would reach out to them through his private email address during a public-relations firestorm over research being conducted on beagle puppies by his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the White Coat Waste Project, citing FOIA records exclusively shared with The Post.
The controversial agency-funded research included the tormenting and killing of beagle puppies in Tunisia to learn more about a parasitic disease. The NIAID initially denied involvement but Fauci confirmed this year that his agency indeed approved the grants for the experiments.
“I will send you an e-mail via my gmail account,” Fauci said in an email dated Oct. 29, 2021 to Washington Post reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb, who had expressed sympathy about the spate of “crazy articles” that were surfacing about the NIAID head.
Earlier emails in the thread show Fauci had shared an article from the left-leaning fact check website Snopes about his oversight of HIV clinical drug trials on foster children during the 1980s in an apparent attempt to cast doubt on his connection to the beagle experiments.
The Snopes article referenced “rumors” meant to “disparage” the NIAID director that included claimed the HIV trials “murdered disabled children.” It also suggested Fauci was not responsible for allegations that included his approval of the taxpayer-funded Tunisian dog experiments, which at the time had prompted a bipartisan letter of condemnation from members of Congress
“As per our discussion, more of the same,” Fauci wrote to the journalist, apparently dismissing questions about the experiments as ludicrous — though he later confirmed to a House subcommittee on June 3 that he “signed off” on the grants that funded them.
The email exchange raises serious questions about Fauci potentially conducting government business from a private account — in direct violation of federal record-keeping laws and his own testimony to Congress earlier this year.
David Schertler, an attorney for Fauci, told The Post that the former NIAID head “stands by his June 3rd testimony before Congress.”
“The email to which you refer involved a personal matter and not a matter related to government business,” said Schertler, who is also representing convicted Sen. Bob Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, in a sweeping federal corruption case.
“For that reason, Dr. Fauci used his personal email account to communicate about the matter,” he added.
But White Coat Waste Project founder and president Anthony Bellotti told The Post that the email was proof that Fauci “broke federal law.”
“We’ve followed the money and exposed how Fauci lied under oath about not funding gain-of-function at the Wuhan animal lab, that he lied about not bankrolling beagle torture in Tunisia, and, now, that he broke federal law by using his personal email to evade FOIA requests about Beaglegate and secretly communicate with a Washington Post reporter who then published NIH disinformation to protect him and discredit us,” Bellotti told The Post.
“Fauci’s the poster child for government corruption and Congress needs to hold him accountable for his abuses, which carry criminal penalties including fines and jail time,” he added.
Representatives for the NIAID did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Abutaleb.
In a fact-check last month on the Beagle experiment, the Washington Post showed that the NIH project in Tunisia was scrubbed from a grant database weeks after members of the press began inquiring about it in 2021 as a result of White Coat Waste Project unearthing the experiments.
Fauci asked NIAID staff for details of the grant in late October of that year. An agency employee days later engaged in a potential conflict of interest by editing a published study on the research to say that the NIAID funded a separate but similar study.
Fauci asked NIAID staff for details of the grant that year in late October. One of the agency’s employees later pressured the journal that published the study to remove its affiliation, according to internal NIAID documents obtained by White Coat Waste and reported on by the Washington Post.
Representatives for the NIAID later said it funded a separate but similar study involving sand flies.
In his recent memoir, Fauci decried reports on the experiments, which had hungry sand flies feast on the beagle puppies that were later euthanized, as “lies” and “lunacy” from the “far-right” — but before the book’s publication, he told Congress he “signed off on them because they were approved by a peer review.”
That admission came in his June 3 testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which had previously obtained a trove of explosive emails showing one of his top advisers used a private email account to evade FOIA requests and bragged about deleting other “smoking guns.”
The exchanges included emails between the ex-senior adviser, Dr. David Morens, and EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak, whose organization received more than half a million in NIH funding to help conduct gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology starting in 2014.
“[T]here is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail [sic], or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote in one April 21, 2021, email, to Daszak implicating Fauci in what he called a “secret back channel.”
Fauci denied knowledge of his erstwhile companion’s actions, telling House COVID Subcommittee panel members, “I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about. There is no backchannel at NIAID.”
“Did you communicate with anyone relating to anything regarding NIH or with Dr. Morens on a private email?” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) also asked him in the hearing.
“I do not do government business on my private email,” Fauci replied.
Malliotakis told The Post on Monday that the email was further “proof” of “gross misconduct” by Fauci and his advisers at NIAID and NIH.
“This unethical behavior undermines public trust and raises serious concerns about the integrity of our public health institutions,” she said. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and Congress should immediately act to hold him accountable for lying under oath and get the full picture for the American people.”
COVID subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) recommended Daszak for prosecution based on his misleading testimony to the panel, while EcoHealth Alliance has been suspended from receiving further grants and the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been debarred from US funding for the next 10 years.
The Manhattan-based nonprofit has strenuously denied all wrongdoing.
Morens, who served as Fauci’s top adviser at NIAID from 1998 to 2022, is currently on leave and is the subject of an internal NIH investigation for his FOIA evasions and alleged deletion of federal records.
Wenstrup said he was potentially open to criminal prosecution as well.
The House COVID subcommittee later demanded that Fauci’s attorneys also hand over any personal email and cellphone records that pertained to COVID origins after Morens’ conduct came to light, but his attorneys informed the panel that they had no documents responsive to the request.
A former federal investigator told The Post that the White Coat Waste FOIA production “justifies inquiries into Dr. Fauci’s potential use of personal emails to conduct NIH official business.”
Wenstrup has indicated before that his committee is not afraid to use its subpoena power.
