Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup called out the “contradictions” in the testimony from one former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Anthony Fauci’s senior advisors during a hearing Wednesday.
Wenstrup appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” to discuss the subcommittee’s hearing with Fauci Senior Advisor Dr. David Morens in which he was grilled by both sides of the aisles over his protection of Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following a clip from the hearing which shows Morens’ response after being called out for allegedly destroying emails to protect Fauci, Fox host Laura Ingraham asked Wenstrup his take on Morens’ testimony. (RELATED: ‘You’re Going To Be Haunted By Your Testimony’: Bipartisan Lawmakers Grill Top Fauci Aid Over FOIA Evasion)
“It really was and the contradictions between his previous transcribed interview and what we have found in these emails that he thought maybe he got rid of that we have been able to get — not only his official ones but his Gmail,” Wenstrup said. “It’s unbelievable that the message he tried to give out today that, ‘I didn’t know these were official.’ Well you were talking about NIH, you were talking about —”
“He was deleting them,” Ingraham jumped in. “Let me just make it clear for the people watching. Because you’re a congressman, you have to be a diplomat, I don’t have to be so diplomatic. He was deleting damaging information. He was deleting information that would have made Tony Fauci and the entire office most likely look really bad because of either what they knew about the gain of function research, who was funding it, and whether U.S. tax dollars were going towards it. That’s what was going on here from the beginning.”
“Two things [that] were in the emails that we found,” Wenstrup added. “One he says, ‘We have to protect Tony.’ The other thing he says is, ‘Tony doesn’t want his fingerprints over any of this stuff that has to do with [the] origins of Covid.’ So it tells you right there what he was doing and working outside the box illegally and we’re pursuing this in every aspect. He’s dead to rights today and you saw it was a bipartisan thing. They could not avoid trying to defend it.”
Morens appeared for the subcommittee hearing Wednesday to discuss his time under Fauci’s leadership. Both Democrats and Republicans were seen pressing Morens after allegations surfaced that he had been allegedly using “back channels” to communicate with Fauci about issues correlating with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Morens allegedly violated NIH policy by deleting emails after they were requested through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), telling people to contact him instead through his personal email, according to the House Oversight Committee. Within the emails obtained Morens also allegedly suggested to Fauci to use his private email to conduct government business.
