Covid transparency troubles wallop the feds
Fauci aide, Missouri v. Biden First Amendment case plague NIH, Team Biden
The only things that afflicted federal officials during covid were a culture of fear and the compulsion to censor speech that went against their official narratives.
In the past two weeks, we had revelations of top aide to Dr. Anthony Fauci pulling a Hillary Clinton–personal email for public work–and a federal judge blowing up Team Biden’s Big Tech censorship program.
A top adviser to Fauci at the National Institutes of Health admitted he used a personal email account to avoid the demands of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Dr. David Morens also said he planned to delete emails to avoid media scrutiny. The FOIA law requires public entities, such as the NIH, to turn over records when citizens request them. The records at government agencies are owned by taxpayers, not the individuals serving in certain positions at that moment in time. Too many public officials fail to comply, as Morens reveals with such candor.
Meanwhile, U.S. federal District Judge Terry Doughty used Independence Day to issue a temporary injunction against the Biden administration communicating with Big Tech because of the widespread censorship the administration demanded of Twitter, Facebook, and Google. In about 24 hours on July 5, the Biden administration filed its intent to appeal the injunction.
Both stories underscore government officials in the U.S. executive branch behaving badly. It’s one thing to behave badly by misjudgment or misunderstanding. However, it is a different thing when the bad behavior was intentional and planned. It appears to be the latter in both instances.
The key subject matter for both issues is the covid-19 pandemic, and specifically, how to address differing opinions on how to handle it and what the public should know. For Morens, he intentionally hid information he knew the public would want. For the Biden Administration’s Big Tech censorship program, various individuals on Team Biden–and Judge Doughty named names–pressured social media companies on what could and could not be seen on those platforms.
The Intercept broke the story on Morens’s private email:
‘As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly,’ wrote David M. Morens, a high-ranking NIH official, in a September 2021 email, one of a series of email exchanges that included many leading scientists involved in the bitter covid origins debate. ‘Stuff sent to my gmail gets to my phone,” he added, “but not my NIH computer.’
The Intercept reported that Morens noted to a group that his Gmail account had been hacked, and that he might have to use his NIH email account to communicate with them instead. “Don’t worry,” he wrote, “just send to any of my addresses, and I will delete anything I don’t want to see in the New York Times.”
Morens’s communication was uncovered by the congressional committee examining the covid origins. The Missouri v. Biden First Amendment case was brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and several scientists impacted by the Big Tech censorship directed by various officials in the Biden administration.
How about some hard questions for Morens, such as:
What did he know and when did he know it?
What would a fully, unredacted version of internal NIH and external communication from and to Morens reveal?
Did the NIH ever have a discussion about natural immunity? If not? Why not?
Did the NIH ever have conversations about getting rid of face masks?
Did the NIH ever have debate over mandating the covid-19 vaccine?
Was there any self-reflection to consider alternate viewpoints on handling covid-19 as data emerged worldwide?
Those answers would reveal the deeper ideas that were never public. They would also underscore the lack of any democratic process for government to address covid-19.
Some people are recommending the NIH inspector general examine Morens's behavior because it likely violated multiple NIH and federal government policies.
And we know when Hillary Clinton established a private email server when she was Secretary of State she suffered no consequences. That gave Morens an incentive to believe he had a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Meanwhile, Doughty wrote the following in granting a temporary injunction against the Biden administration on July Fourth:
If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition.
Missouri v. Biden focuses on the Biden administration colluding with Big Tech, and in some cases, making demands of Big Tech, to censor specific ideas related to covid. However, as Missouri AG Andrew Bailey revealed following the decision, the Biden Administration wasn’t just focused on censoring covid information. Bailey wrote on Twitter: “Here the judge notes that the feds want to censor ‘with regard to other issues, such as gas prices, parody speech, calling the President a liar, climate change, gender, and abortion’ and criticism about ‘U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the return of U.S. support of Ukraine.’ ”
Team Biden wasn’t just focused on censoring “covid misinformation.” Team Biden also censored information that made the President look bad. Doughty believes the government’s behavior with Big Tech created a real-life Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” and a violation of First Amendment speech rights.
Daniel Kotzin, who has been a vocal lockdown and covid-19 vaccine-mandate critic, stated the following on Twitter two days after Doughty’s ruling:
It is not complicated — the U.S. government is not permitted to censor our opinions. Even during a pandemic. Even on social media. Even if some people don’t like what we say. Even if the government is sure that we are wrong. Freedom of speech is not a reward for good behavior.
Public entities at every level of government believe they can keep information from the public, as Morens did. Worse, the penalties for public officials who violate FOIA laws are woefully prosecuted and enforced.
However, the Missouri v. Biden case goes deeper to the issues of the government violating the ability of Americans to speak freely, even wrongly, about whatever the issue. The government–at any level–is not the arbiter of truth.
History shows that governments, both tyrannical and free, are guilty many times of lying and pushing their lies.