House GOP sub­poe­nas top Fau­ci aide on use of pri­vate email dur­ing pan­dem­ic

EXCLUSIVE — House Repub­li­cans sent a sub­poe­na order Tues­day to the for­mer top aide of Antho­ny Fau­ci, for­mer direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute for Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases, regard­ing his use of his pri­vate email address to con­duct gov­ern­ment busi­ness regard­ing the ori­gins of COVID-19.
The deci­sion to sub­poe­na the offi­cial, David Morens, comes fol­low­ing the Fri­day release of emails by the pri­vate research firm Eco­Health Alliance show­ing that Morens request­ed for Eco­Health Pres­i­dent Peter Daszak to com­mu­ni­cate exclu­sive­ly via Morens’s pri­vate Gmail account.
An email from Daszak to Morens dat­ed April 26, 2020, says that Daszak will “com­mu­ni­cate with [Morens] via gmail from now on” about the coro­n­avirus, con­firm­ing alle­ga­tions by con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans that Morens may have vio­lat­ed fed­er­al records statutes at the ear­ly stages of the pan­dem­ic to avoid gov­ern­ment and pub­lic scruti­ny.
Time­line of the Morens inves­ti­ga­tion
The Select Sub­com­mit­tee on the Coro­n­avirus Pan­dem­ic has been inves­ti­gat­ing Morens since last June fol­low­ing the release of emails from Morens’s gov­ern­ment account encour­ag­ing NIH col­leagues to con­tact him via his Gmail to avoid Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act …