Former NIH official accused of making emails ‘disappear’ pleads Fifth to COVID subcommittee

Former National Institutes of Health employee Margaret Moore, accused by Republicans of helping others shield emails from the public, invoked her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination at a deposition before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Friday.

Moore, a former FOIA public liaison for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), also declined to answer questions from Fox News in the hallway before the committee meeting. 

The committee on Monday issued a subpoena for Moore to appear.

‘Instead of using NIH’s FOIA office to provide the transparency and accountability that the American people deserve, it appears that ‘FOIA Lady’ Margaret Moore assisted efforts to evade federal recordkeeping laws,’ said Rep. Brad Wenstrup from Ohio, chairman of the subcommittee. 

He added, ‘Her alleged scheme to help NIH officials delete COVID-19 records and use their personal emails to avoid FOIA is appalling and deserves a thorough investigation.’

Moore’s legal team has defended her right to abstain from testifying, claiming that the former NIH employee has been willing to aid the investigation via alternative means.

‘Ms. Moore has cooperated with the Select Subcommittee through counsel to find an alternative to her sitting for an interview, including expediting her own FOIA request for her own documents, which she provided to the Select Subcommittee voluntarily,’ her legal team wrote.

Moore worked for NIAID for over three decades and at one point served as a special assistant to Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

She is accused of teaching ‘tricks’ to other members of NIAID to hide records and evade FOIA requests. 

‘I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d but before the search starts,’ Fauci senior advisor Dr. David Morens wrote in an email sent from his personal Gmail account in Feb. 2021. ‘Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.’

The materials sought by the COVID subcommittee would provide insight into the NIH’s relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, commonly believed to have been the origin of the coronavirus in 2019.

Other emails obtained from May 2021 show the NIH general counsel warning the FOIA office ‘not release anything having to do with EcoHealth Alliance/WIV,’ with ‘WIV’ referring to the Wuhan Institute.