(New York Post) A watchdog group is accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of having lied to Congress last month when he claimed he never used private email to conduct official business, pointing to newly obtained records on the “Beaglegate” scandal – though his attorney has denied all wrongdoing.
Fauci, 83, told a journalist in October 2021 that he would reach out to them through his private email address during a public-relations firestorm over research being conducted on beagle puppies by his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,FOIA records obtained by the White Coat Waste Project and exclusively shared with The Post show.
The controversial agency-funded research included the tormenting and killing of beagle puppies in Tunisia to learn more about a parasitic disease. The NIAID initially denied involvement but Fauci confirmed this year that his agency indeed approved the grants for the experiments.
“I will send you an e-mail via my gmail account,” Fauci said in an email dated Oct. 29, 2021 to Washington Post reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb, who had expressed sympathy about the spate of “crazy articles” that were surfacing about the NIAID head.
Earlier emails in the thread show Fauci had shared an article from the left-leaning fact check website Snopes about his oversight of HIV clinical drug trials on foster children during the 1980s in an apparent attempt to cast doubt on his connection to the beagle experiments.
The Snopes article referenced “rumors” meant to “disparage” the NIAID director that included claimed the HIV trials “murdered disabled children.” It also suggested Fauci was not responsible for allegations that included his approval of the taxpayer-funded Tunisian dog experiments, which at the time had prompted a bipartisan letter of condemnation from members of Congress.
“As per our discussion, more of the same,” Fauci wrote to the journalist, apparently dismissing questions about the experiments as ludicrous — though he later confirmed to a House subcommittee on June 3 that he “signed off” on the grants that funded them.
White Coat Waste Project in 2022 also released internal NIAID documents that included the full grant proposal.
The email exchange raises serious questions about Fauci potentially conducting government business from a private account — in direct violation of federal record-keeping laws and his own testimony to Congress earlier this year.
David Schertler, an attorney for Fauci, told The Post that the former NIAID head “stands by his June 3rd testimony before Congress.”
“The email to which you refer involved a personal matter and not a matter related to government business,” said Schertler, who is also representing convicted Sen. Bob Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, in a sweeping federal corruption case.
“For that reason, Dr. Fauci used his personal email account to communicate about the matter,” he added.
But White Coat Waste Project founder and president Anthony Bellotti told The Post that the email was proof that Fauci “broke federal law.”
“We’ve followed the money and exposed how Fauci lied under oath about not funding gain-of-function at the Wuhan animal lab, that he lied about not bankrolling beagle torture in Tunisia, and, now, that he broke federal law by using his personal email to evade FOIA requests about Beaglegate and secretly communicate with a Washington Post reporter who then published NIH disinformation to protect him and discredit us,” Bellotti told The Post.
“Fauci’s the poster child for government corruption and Congress needs to hold him accountable for his abuses, which carry criminal penalties including fines and jail time,” he added.
