GOP lawmakers are considering recommending criminal charges against former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci's senior adviser.
David Morens has been a chief focus of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic since June, when it discovered he used his personal Gmail account to conduct official business about COVID-19 to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIA).
Morens is scheduled to give his first public testimony before Congress on Wednesday. In an unusual move, he did not provide a written opening statement before the hearing, the Examiner reported.
"At the very least, he misled Congress through his transcribed interview," subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, told the Examiner. "Lying to Congress is a felony.
"As we go through it and learn more, we may make some criminal referrals. Hopefully, we have a Department of Justice that's willing to act when laws have been violated."
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., told Newsmax last week he believes Fauci lied to Congress when he testified about government funding at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
"I do believe on the evidence that we've seen that he has lied to Congress," McCormick said on "The Record With Greta Van Susteren."
Fauci is set to testify before the subcommittee June 3.
The subcommittee's probe into EcoHealth has led to allegations the nonprofit group intentionally misled National Institutes of Health (NIH) about the type of experiments being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
EcoHealth, which used NIH grants to fund coronavirus research, allegedly failed to report potentially dangerous pathogen research at the lab to U.S. authorities.
The FBI last concluded the most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic was an accidental lab leak.
EcoHealth President Peter Daszak is a close friend of Morens, who likely advised Fauci to approve the grant for EcoHealth to work with Wuhan scientists on bat coronaviruses.
Emails between Morens and Daszak on Morens' personal email show the NIH employee "was clearly trying to show [Daszak] ways to try and get his grant reinstated" after the EcoHealth project at the Wuhan had been suspended by the Trump administration in 2020, Wenstrup told the Examiner.
The subcommittee last summer found emails sent by Morens in 2021 instructing colleagues to use his personal Gmail address to avoid FOIA requests and he would "delete anything [he doesn't] want to see in The New York Times."