Anthony Fauci’s final months in office, in which he opposed a federal judge striking down a federal travel mask mandate and unilaterally funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to a scandal-plagued NGO, were most likely illegal, according to findings from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee claims that his term was never legally renewed.
According to the findings, the Department of Health and Human Services “repeatedly misled” Congress and tried to cover its tracks in order to dismiss allegations that Fauci and his allies were unlawfully working for months, during which they handed out tens of billions of dollars of government contracts, many of which are now in legal jeopardy.
HHS secretary Xavier Becerra, the committee wrote, “fail[ed] to follow the law and ensure accountability for billions of dollars in taxpayer funding at the National Institutes of Health.”
At issue is the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act, which required the secretary of HHS to appoint or reappoint NIH’s Institute and Center (IC) directors in December 2021. However, rather than doing his job, Becerra deferred to an unnamed NIH human resources staffer to reappoint the IC directors as his department misled Congress by “repeatedly assur[ing] the Committee that the NIH IC Directors were validly reappointed but did not produce proper supporting documentation.”
E&C Republicans want the buck to stop with Becerra. “Secretary Becerra and all guilty parties must be held accountable for these illegally-delegated grants,” Representative August Pfluger told The Spectator. “The American people already have a massive distrust in public agencies, especially following the mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is another example of the Biden administration disregarding standing statute and the constitution.”
While Fauci, who was once the highest paid federal employee, has taken his talents to Georgetown University, Republicans argue that he might have to pay back some of his salary, which clocked in at almost $500,000 a year.
In an ostensible concession to multiple inquiries from the Energy and Commerce Committee, Becerra attempted to retroactively appoint the ICs last month — almost two years after their terms expired. The findings “jeopardize… the legal validity of more than $25 billion in federal biomedical research grants made in 2022 alone,” including a controversial grant to EcoHealth Alliance that Republicans say Fauci himself approved.
Representative Tim Walberg, another E&C member, said that these charges prove that the Biden administration’s fealty to the law “is only lip service. While Secretary Becerra failed to legally appoint fourteen NIH officials, including Dr. Fauci, money continued to flow to organizations like EcoHealth Alliance.”
The Spectator has consistently covered problems with EcoHealth Alliance, which include double-billing government agencies and failing to produce records of its work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Despite these well-publicized problems, Fauci provided EcoHealth with a $653,392 grant to conduct further research on coronaviruses in October 2022 — even though he was unauthorized to do so.
“It would logically follow that if Fauci wasn’t lawfully appointed, he couldn’t approve grants, including the EcoHealth grant,” a Republican staffer told The Spectator. These concerns are echoed in a letter that E&C Republicans, led by Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Brett Guthrie and Morgan Griffith, wrote to Becerra. “That he [Fauci] could have amassed and exercised all of this authority and influence without being duly reappointed as NIAID Director demonstrates how ineffective HHS is at managing its component agencies and how little accountability currently exists,” they wrote.
Their colleagues on E&C tell The Spectator that the Biden administration’s arrogance is catching up with it. “The ignorance and arrogance of the Biden administration continues to show,” Representative Kelly Armstrong said. “Either the Department of Health and Human Services leadership doesn’t know what their job is, or they thought no one would catch them. Probably both.”
