According to recent developments, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has uncovered information that could lead to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s indictment. Paul reportedly has sufficient evidence to prosecute Fauci based on the congressional testimony of a former top aide of the health official.
Last week, Dr. David Morens, a former aide to Fauci, the retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), testified before the House Oversight and Accountability Select Subcommittee. The advisor faces accusations of destroying evidence and evading a Freedom of Information Act request.
“The most important knowledge that we learned is that [Dr.] David Morens, 20-year assistant to Fauci, was purposely evading FOIA, which is the law, ” Paul said. “More than that, he was also destroying evidence. The Kenctucky Senator continued, “He was taking emails and destroying them … When he was asked about it, he said he didn’t know emails were federal records. Nobody is that stupid.” Paul suggested that if Dr. Fauci requested the records to be destroyed, it could be grounds for an indictment. “If Fauci ordered you to destroy these records, I think he could be indicted,” he said.
Morens admitted to using his personal email for official work purposes, violating the NIH’s record retention policy. The Fauci aid apologized for this, realizing he should not have used the personal account. “I shouldn’t have done that. That’s wrong,” he told the subcommittee.
Paul further suggested that Morens also implicated Dr. Fauci in destroying evidence. “He said, ‘Well, I also think Tony has deleted his as well,’” Paul said. “So he basically, in his email, implicated Tony [Fauci] for destroying records as well.”
The GOP senator emphasized that destroying government records is a felony, particularly during a federal investigation. “Disobeying FOIA and using Gmail [instead of a government email account], you can’t put anybody in jail for that; but destroying records is [a felony],” he explained.
Paul continued, “It’s also destroying records in the middle of an investigation. We referred this investigation to the DOJ for the first time over a year ago. So, during what was supposed to be an investigation, they’re destroying records.”
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However, Morens defended his actions, noting that he was unaware that his conduct was potentially felonious. “I was not aware of that, and I was not aware that anything I deleted like emails was a federal record because we have federal records training periodically. And the training, you know, that I recall we received, defined a federal record in a very different way than you may be thinking of it. None of it defined it as an email, ” he stated.
Over the past several years, Paul has been at the forefront of the Republican Party’s efforts to hold Fauci and the government accountable while uncovering the truth behind the pandemic. Fauci has consistently maintained that the NIH has never funded gain-of-function research at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology, a common accusation speculating the origin of COVID-19.
Fauci and Paul have continually battled in Senate hearings. In one famous instance, the Kentucky senator accused Fauci of lying to Congress. Fauci defended himself, “Sen. Paul, you do not know what you are talking about.”