The Emails and Leak the GOP House Covid Subcommittee Won't Discuss
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (HSSCP) began holding hearings in February 2023, claiming to investigate COVID-19 policy failures while hosting as experts right-wing scientists who had worked in the Trump White House that so failed the American people.
As a distraction from the Trump administration’s failures, the HSSCP has lately been pushing the evidence-lacking lab leak COVID-19 origins theory and targeting scientists. The subcommittee has particularly been trying to prove Trump’s chief medical adviser and the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was put in the unpleasant position of correcting the president’s nonsense in 2020, was involved in a cover-up of information regarding the lab leak because he and his colleagues were involved in funding of research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The subcommittee brought Fauci in for 14 hours of behind-closed-doors grilling in January, sat on that for months while hyping up his live-streamed hearing this week, released the January testimony — which failed to prove the points they were trying to make — along with a cherry-picked memo version just ahead of said hearing, and received strong condemnation from Democrats in the hearing for their shameless show trial.
Nevertheless, the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), released a statement following the hearing, villainizing Fauci and gloating about having held him “publicly accountable.” And Wenstrup went straight to Fox News, because of course.
Fauci’s emails did nothing to prove the lab leak origin theory or the cover-up claims whatsoever, just as the subcommittee failed to show EcoHealth Alliance and its president Dr. Peter Daszak – who was grilled in his own HSSCP show trial shortly before Fauci – funded viral research that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
The HSSCP has focussed on senior advisor to NIAID, Dr. David Morens, admitting to having deleted emails and used a private email to avoid FOIA requests. In the subpoenaed emails, Morens writes to his colleagues about concerns some of their messages could be embarrassing — but does not discuss covering up of lab leak origin proof — and worry that they would be targets of a far-Right anti-science attack campaign.
The bullying use of FOIA requests for a political purpose is a well-worn tactic used by Wenstrup’s fellow GOP Representative from Ohio, Jim Jordan, against those who study far-Right disinformation — whose work threatens Trump.
There are, however, plenty of damning pandemic-related emails from politicians and scientists made publicly available thanks to the HSSCP’s predecessor, the Democrat-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (HSSCC). The HSSCC published reports on their investigation into the Trump administration’s mishandling of the pandemic response, pushing of a dangerous herd immunity strategy and a false cure, and interference with public messaging.
One such email which should be discussed comes from Dr. Paul Alexander, a Trump-appointed scientific adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In an email obtained by the HSSCC in their report regarding the pushing of the dangerous herd immunity strategy, Alexander writes to senior HHS officials that as far as young, healthy people go “we want them infected.”
The full email from Alexander also includes a desire to “stop Fauci from talking.” This is unsurprising as Alexander is one of the major players in the HSSCC’s report about the Trump administration’s unprecedented meddling in the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) public messaging. To quote the report:
Officials from Mr. Caputo’s office attacked CDC scientists when they publicly shared information that Trump officials believed contradicted the Administration’s messaging. In a new email obtained by the Select Subcommittee, Dr. Paul Alexander—a Senior Advisor to Mr. Caputo—attacked a forthcoming CDC report as “garbage” and designed “to hurt the public and the administration.” He advocated for CDC officials to be fired, saying “he [Dr. Redfield] gots [sic] to start firing people in large numbers there! This agency is working against the President daily!”
Trump Administration officials repeatedly sought to alter CDC and HHS press materials to promote positive news, downplay coronavirus risks, and attempt to redirect blame away from the Trump Administration for its poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic. For instance, a new email obtained by the Select Subcommittee shows that on May 8, 2020, Dr. Alexander sought to edit talking points about a CDC report, telling Mr. Caputo “this is how I am supporting the messaging . . . . Any way to help you and showcase your work for this great President.” Another newly obtained email reveals that on May 28, 2020, Dr. Alexander suggested changes to a draft CDC statement on the coronavirus death toll in the United States to make the statement “more positive,” removing language he thought was too “heavy.”
Following his time with the HHS, Alexander has been associated with the Brownstone Institute, spoke at the Defeat the Mandates rally, and attended the Ottawa trucker rally. He runs a Substack account where he has posted increasingly vengeful and unhinged rants. Recently, he named 99 “horsemen of COVID” who he believes need to be “dragged into proper legal tribunals,” and discussed the use of firing squads and hangings.
Another HSSCC report includes a particularly damning August 2020 email from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). The report involves the Trump administration’s antagonism of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over hydroxychloroquine, which Trump began promoting for COVID-19 in March 2020. Despite a large-scale randomized control trial of hydroxychloroquine for the pandemic-causing virus posting results showing no use for the drug by early June 2020, Trump and his allies — particularly the Council for National Policy-tied America’s Frontline Doctors — continued promoting it.
Johnson wrote to a couple doctors as well as former Director of the White House National Trade Council Peter Navarro about most within the Trump administration not wanting “to touch HCQ with a 100’ pole” and the “political danger” of “loss of support of doctors” like those on the email. Johnson would host hearings throughout the fall of 2020 to promote the “early treatment” drug, introducing ivermectin in a December 2020 hearing.
In addition to emails in the HSSCC reports, there are messages leaked from an anti-vax group worth investigating further. The UK-based Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART) suffered a leak of their chat log and the UK-based Byline Times reported in 2021 on how these leaked messages showed the group to be part of a network of anti-public health organizations coordinating with the media to influence government. One of the authors of this article, Karam Bales, has written here on Substack about the involvement of US bad actors revealed in these leaked messages (see here and here).
One of the more disturbing messages in the leaks comes from former Cambridge Analytica lead psychologist Patrick Fagan. When discussing creating a disinformation campaign against vaccines for children, he admits that is “abhorrent” and the public would view them as “child murders.” But he says that, so long as they “tread carefully,” he’s open to the strategy.
In addition to Fagan’s work with HART, Byline Times reported in 2021 that he served as an adviser to a global anti-lockdown group, COVID-19 Assembly, along with former Harvard professor Dr. Martin Kulldorff. Kulldorff was one of the authors of the Koch-tied anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration and worked in the Trump White House, as discussed in an HSSCC report.
Kulldorff also was one of the experts the HSSCP hosted at their first hearing in February 2023. The right-wing Heritage Foundation’s “Road Map for COVID-19 Congressional Oversight” — published a month prior to the opening hearing — highlights Kulldorff and also recommends discussion of the lab leak theory, which we are seeing now.
There are politicians and allied scientists with quite a lot to answer for regarding our nation’s poor pandemic response, but they are not the ones being targeted by the HSSCP. Some of them are being openly embraced by the subcommittee. This is the real cover up and the MAGA GOP is happy to sacrifice ethical scientists in this election year for purely political reasons.
Given that the Heritage Foundation appears to be running the game plan for the HSSCP, this sort of vengeful behavior is not surprising — especially considering they are also behind the terrifying Project 2025 plan for a second Trump presidency. The scientific community, Democrats, and the media must push back on this political targeting of scientists. In reporting on the HSSCP’s shameful hearings, it is crucial to discuss the “road map” as well as the HSSCC reports in order to contextualize what we are seeing play out now.