328. The DOJ indictment of former Fauci Advisor Dr. David Morens

Introduction

0:00Hi, everybody. Sheryl Ackeson here. Welcome to another edition of the Sheryl Ackeson podcast.

0:12In today's podcast, the significance of the DOJ indictment of former Dr. Fauci advisor, Dr. David Morins. This means digging into the alleged scheme to evade transparency laws and other cases of document destruction over the years. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.

DOJ Indictment

0:49In a major development tied to long-running congressional probes and the origins of COVID-19, the Justice Department this week announced the indictment of Dr. David Morins. Charges include conspiracy against the United States, destruction, alteration, or falsification of records and federal investigations, concealment, removal, or mutilation of records, and aiding and abetting. There are also reports, as you probably heard right after that, that former FBI Director James Comey has also been indicted. But in this podcast, we're talking about Dr. Morins. Age 78,

1:25he's a former senior advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called NIAID. He also served as a top aide to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Morins was a Fauci aide during a very critical period from 2006 to 2022. According to prosecutors, Morins and as-yet unnamed co-conspirators allegedly orchestrated a plan to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests and federal laws during the pandemic.

1:59Such blatant evasion of public records laws, as you will hear, is not a first. In fact, I think it's pretty clear that federal officials have been conspiring to and actually executing plans to evade Freedom of Information laws and public information requests through a variety of illegal means for a long time, but are rarely, if ever, held accountable. In the new indictment of

Alleged Scheme

2:23Morins, the alleged scheme centered on communications about a controversial federal grant of taxpayer money, your money, my money, to a controversial non-profit wrapped up in the COVID controversy, EcoHealth Alliance. The grant, given through the National Institutes of Health, was for bat coronavirus research, the very sort of research ultimately tied by many experts to the COVID pandemic. The grant included sub-awards to the Communist Chinese government's Wuhan Institute of

2:54Virology. It's still hard to imagine why and how we were doing business with the Communist Chinese on their scientific endeavors, but the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the lab that many experts have concluded started the COVID pandemic. Under public pressure and controversy, NIH eventually ended the grant to the Wuhan facility, but prosecutors say Morins and others used his and their personal Gmail accounts to hide official discussions, share non-public NIH information,

3:26draft letters pushing to restore the funding, and narratives to counter implications against the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Dr. Fauci and then head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, were also revealed to have conspired behind the scenes to publicly push in scientific journals and the media the natural origin narrative, as if COVID-19 had occurred naturally, not from the Wuhan lab research. They also worked behind the scenes, as you may know, to discredit the scientists,

4:00researchers, researchers, and reporters who exposed the truth about the Wuhan lab and its research and its links to the U.S. and its links to American researchers and taxpayer money. Acting Attorney General

Abuse of Trust

4:12Todd Blanche describes the case against Dr. Morins as a profound abuse of trust at a time when the American people needed it most. He added, quote, as alleged in the indictment, Dr. Morins and his co-conspirators deliberately concealed information and falsified records in an effort to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19. He goes on to say, government officials have a solemn duty to provide honest, well-grounded facts and advice in service of the public interest

4:42not to advance their own personal or ideological agendas. FBI Director Kash Patel emphasized the broader implications stating, circumventing records protocols with the intention of avoiding transparency is something that will not be tolerated by this FBI. Not only did Morins allegedly engage in the illegal obfuscation of his communications, says Kash Patel, but he received kickbacks for doing so. The indictment also alleges Morins accepted illegal gratuities, including wine delivered to his Maryland home from a co-conspirator

5:17whom he then rewarded by authoring a scientific commentary advocating for natural origins of COVID-19. Additional perks such as meals at Michelin-starred restaurants were reportedly discussed.

Kickbacks and Favors

5:33This indictment, after several years of questions, validates some years of bipartisan scrutiny that began as early as 2021. On June 17, 2021, days after Senator Ron Johnson and four other senators sent a letter to Biden HHS Secretary Becerra and NIH Director Francis Collins demanding documents on COVID-19 origins, days after Morins fired off a Gmail message to 10 of his colleagues in the American Society of Tropical

6:05Medicine and Hygiene. The email subject line read, confidential within our small group, please. Morins attached the senator's letter requesting information, summarized the requests related to COVID-19 origins, and made a striking admission. He said he had, quote, retained very few records on these matters. Now, mind you, public records laws require that information like this be retained and saved on a daily basis. So here he seems to be admitting right off the top that he didn't do that. He destroyed

6:39records or didn't save them. He explicitly urged his colleagues to send what he called correspondence on sensitive issues to his personal Gmail address rather than through official channels. In a November 16, 2023 letter to HHS Secretary Becerra and HHS Inspector General Christy Grimm, Senator Johnson laid out the implications in blunt terms. He wrote that Morins' actions to not save records or perhaps destroy them, quote, may have intentionally deleted or destroyed records

7:14related to the origins of COVID-19 and showed an apparent evasion of federal record-keeping requirements and a complete disregard for transparency. Senator Johnson added, Dr. Morin's apparent actions may have directly obstructed my oversight efforts. This is in 2023. And Senator Johnson went on to say, I am deeply concerned that HHS officials may have intentionally removed or destroyed responsive records on the origins of COVID-19 or on other aspects of the pandemic.

7:46Morin's role gave him direct access to Dr. Fauci, whom he advised. He helped brief Fauci for communications with the White House, Congress, and the public. House Oversight Committee investigations later uncovered additional emails in which Morin's boasted about deleting records using private email to evade FOIA, even consulting NIH's FOIA liaison on how to make documents, quote, disappear. Notably, Dr. Fauci, though, part of these conversations and many questions raised about him too,

8:20he got a preemptive pardon from President Biden in January 2025. Without that protection, sources suggest that Fauci would likely be facing similar scrutiny and potential charges right now. House Oversight Chairman Representative James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, stated that this new indictment builds on findings from the select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. This is accountability, Comer stated in a statement, pointing to Morin's alleged efforts to undermine transparency during one of the most consequential public health crises in modern history.

8:56If he's convicted, Morin's faces up to five years in prison for the conspiracy count, up to 20 years per count for record falsification in federal investigations, and up to three years per count for concealment of records. I couldn't find any record that Morin's has entered a plea. I think we should assume at this point he will say he is not guilty. I think he made an initial court appearance, but would be entering his first plea next week or so. But it will be very much an anomaly if he's found to be guilty of these things

9:31and he faces any sort of meaningful punishment. Because quite frankly, this is business as usual for many in Washington over decades. After a short break, I will talk about what I uncovered on some of those other long-standing scandals.

Other Scandals

9:46The accusations against Fauci confidant Dr. Morin's are hardly unprecedented in Washington, D.C. Federal officials have been accused of or caught in multiple high-profile cases using personal email accounts, pseudonyms, or other methods to avoid Freedom of Information Act law and federal records preservation requirements. Let me remind you that although they don't think of it this way,

10:18those documents that are generated during their public duty, they belong to us. You and I own those documents and they're required to maintain them. Well, one of the biggest controversies of this kind involves Hillary Clinton. During her tenure as Obama's Secretary of State, it was later revealed that Clinton illegally used a private email server for her official government communications. Long-standing rules and public records laws require official business to be conducted on secure government computers. This was a two-fold problem in her case. First of all, she exposed sensitive

10:54government communications to possible hacking. And in fact, there's evidence that some of those emails were hacked into, so that jeopardizes all of us. And secondly, she's hiding records that we own from us by avoiding Freedom of Information Act law. Hillary Clinton's setup hid her emails from routine FOIA searches. You and I, we can apply to see the records we own by filing a Freedom of Information Act request. The government then is supposed to proceed with a keyword search of sorts, looking at

11:26records and certain dates and then returning the records to us. But they're not looking in her private email server. She or her attorneys eventually improperly deleted tens of thousands of emails that were under congressional subpoena and the server was wiped clean. Then FBI Director James Comey, interesting how these same names and controversies circulate around the same people. Comey later described Clinton's handling of classified and sensitive information when exposed as extremely careless.

12:00Though, he also decided not to bring criminal charges. He said that there was no intent and that she didn't know better. Now mind you, she was head of an agency that enforced these rules on everybody else. And I'm pretty sure if you or I didn't follow these rules and took sensitive communications and avoided public records laws by going off the books, we wouldn't be granted, hey, they just didn't know better, didn't mean any harm. Interestingly enough, the Inspector General later referred charges against

12:34Comey for his own mishandling of FBI information when he was trying to get Donald Trump. But in that case, the Department of Justice declined to prosecute him, exposing the problem we have when those who are allegedly breaking the law are also the ones in charge of enforcing the law. Doesn't work out. But let's go back even further to September of 2014. As I first reported in an exclusive, former State Department official Raymond Maxwell witnessed document destruction in the cover-up

13:06of the 2012 deadly Islamic extremist terrorist attacks on Americans in Benghazi. To set the stage, there was a huge controversy because Hillary Clinton, Obama's Secretary of State at the time, her agency and those working in it got caught covering up all kinds of evidence, spinning after the attacks to try to make them seem as though they weren't terrorist attacks, trying to keep the public from knowing that there had been advance warnings these would occur, trying to keep the public from knowing that the American diplomats on site in Benghazi had begged for better security but had been told

13:42by the Washington, D.C. State Department officials. They couldn't have it. In fact, security was drawn down instead of beefed up. As I cover the story and expose some of these shortfalls and scandals and conspiracies, there were congressional investigations and a supposedly independent board that looked into all of this and they were supposed to have records from the State Department related to it. But Raymond Maxwell, who, by the way, voted for Obama and worked under Hillary Clinton, says he was there and even briefly took part in in a basement room of the State Department on a weekend

14:18when Clinton confidants, including Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, participated in or oversaw an after-hours sorting session regarding Benghazi-related documents. According to Maxwell, what I reported at the time, an office director instructed reviewers to, quote, pull out anything that might put anybody in the Near Eastern Affairs front office or the seventh floor, referring to Clinton and her top advisors, in a bad light. Pull out anything that

14:49might put them in a bad light before the materials were turned over to the Investigative Accountability Review Board. Maxwell described the operation as an exercise in misdirection and potential damage control. After I reported this and it was quite the scandal, no law enforcement body ever followed up with Maxwell or attempted to hold the alleged document destroyers accountable. Very seldom is anything done about these sorts of violations. Obama Attorney General Eric Holder

15:19was also caught using email aliases or pseudonyms. In other words, if a Freedom of Information Act search was done on his records, then it might not show up at all because his name wasn't on the records. He was using a fake name. This was a practice employed by several Obama-era officials to obscure communications and complicate Freedom of Information Act law compliance. In several cases, when I applied to see public documents related to Benghazi, I was told they didn't exist. Later, I saw that the documents did exist because

15:55some of them came out in congressional investigations and were published. I'm talking a long time later. Interestingly, Obama officials frequently, if not always, misspelled my name. And knowing what I know, even though my name is hard to spell, I don't think this was an accident. I think they were misspelling my name because again, as I tried to retrieve records about myself, things that they were doing to me, including the spying on me at the time, while the records might not show up if they're doing a strict

16:27search under the correct spelling of my name, and they're always misspelling my name. Similar tactics have drawn scrutiny in other agencies. In the IRS scandal, some of you may recall a long time ago, it involved alleged targeting of conservative groups by the IRS. The hard drive of IRS worker Lois Lerner supposedly crashed, and hundreds of backup tapes containing her key emails were destroyed in 2014, even as congressional investigations and preservation orders were in effect.

17:02What rotten luck for those seeking the records to expose who was responsible and may have committed crimes. Another case in October of 2014, I exclusively reported on a former federal employee who talked about government officials document destruction or sifting through again to avoid freedom of information act law. I'll play to you a couple of excerpts from my interview with her at the time, Sonia Gilliam, talking about what she learned when she was working for the government. I might add that

17:37the reason she came forward is she saw my story with Raymond Maxwell exposing that document sorting session under Hillary Clinton in the basement of the State Department, and then she contacted me to talk about what she had already seen and observed years before. Speaking of people who are still around, you were reading or you saw the story on television. I'm not sure which it is about Ray Maxwell. Tell me about you watching it and what your thoughts were when you heard about it. My stomach dropped. I said to myself, oh my gosh, here we are 14, 15 years

18:14later. And Cheryl Mills is still in charge of document production. And I'll use that term loosely. And I immediately felt what Ray Maxwell must have felt like. I've never met Ray Maxwell. I don't know Ray Maxwell. But I am Ray Maxwell because I lived Ray Maxwell's story. And I felt compelled to say something. I never left the public service, even though I retired. I'm still a public servant. And I believe the public has a right to know. And that if there's anything that I know, that can help in public service, and uncover what really happened, then I'm willing to stand up.

19:02By the way, as you listen to this, Sonia Gilliam is former assistant secretary of the US Department of Commerce. She was responsible in part for overseeing the production of documents to members of Congress and the public, and describes a process that is not delineated or allowed under FOIA law, as far as I know, but officials at one agency, in this case, the Commerce Department, would send documents that were supposed to be released to other agencies or to be released to other agencies or to the White House, and let them say that a particular document or set of documents should be redacted or not released at all. And this process would serve to obstruct and delay the production of documents. And in some cases, she said, make sure documents weren't released at all when they should have been.

19:52They were sending documents to the White House to see whether they should be released. The general counsel's office would repeatedly report that it's still at the White House. It's over at the White House. And in fact, at some of the meetings, one of the attorneys said that he's waiting on Cheryl Mills. And I found many, many references that I had highlighted in those meetings that we had that said, waiting on White House, calling Cheryl Mills. Cheryl Mills has not responded yet. Cheryl says no. In the meantime, the clock is ticking, and it's illegal to not respond, according to the law, within the time frame. We're waiting on Cheryl Mills. I said, who is Cheryl Mills? Oh, she is the deputy counselor to the president. I about dropped my jaw. I said, what are documents doing over with Cheryl Mills? Oh, well, the coordination, the White House, we need to coordinate these documents.

20:51I was amazed and really just gobsmacked when I saw that the White House was involved to the level that it was. This is under President Bill Clinton, by the way. Cheryl Mills declined to comment when I asked her about this for the story that I reported at the time. Gilliam, by the way, Gilliam, by the way, has logged more than 30 years as an award-winning public servant working for both Democrat and Republican administrations. She says before the Clinton administration, it had not been common practice to send non-White House documents to the White House to try to get approval or non-approval of their release.

21:28A lot of the documents Gilliam is talking about were requested as part of the investigations into Brown's alleged sale of trade mission seats on airplanes. Two years into these investigations, on April 3rd, 1996, Brown and 34 others were, I'll say, kind of mysteriously killed in a plane crash while on an official trade mission in Croatia. So it basically brought the investigation of his conduct to a sudden halt, obviously, and there was no more from him leading to anybody else who may have been involved.

22:05Evidence then revealed a flurry of documents shredding at the Commerce Department in the Commerce Secretary's office right after his death. The document obstruction continued for years, as detailed in a federal court ruling in 1998. District Judge Royce Lamberth at the time likened the behavior of Commerce Department officials to con artists and hooligans. As he said in his court ruling, he found that they, quote, I mean, if you think about it, if what's in the documents is bad enough, officials would much rather take the hit for destroying the documents,

22:52nothing usually happens to them for doing that, than let anybody really see the documents. In an affidavit filed at the time over all of this, in July of 2000, Gilliam stated in part, I know that Ms. Mills and her position as Deputy Counsel to the President advised Commerce officials to withhold certain documents. These interactions with Ms. Mills, as well as other practices, delayed and corrupted the Commerce Department's response to FOIA requests. In a separate case involving missing documents that was brought against the FBI in 1997,

23:28Judge Lamberth didn't find obstruction or conspiracy specifically, but referred to Cheryl Mills' conduct, in this case also as a White House official, as loathsome. Lamberth faulted Mills for, quote, making the most critical error in this entire fiasco because it was a case where she had supposedly learned of missing White House emails but did not take proper steps to resolve the situation. The judge went on to say Mills' actions were totally inadequate to address the problem.

24:00But again, when there's no accountability, not only do the same things happen over and over again, but the same officials persist in government and do the same things over and over again. And now from a story I wrote a long time ago, back in 2014,

Missing Records

24:16and you can bet there are many more cases since then, I picked out some of the top examples of lost and missing government records, including the cases that I just spoke about. But number one, Hillary Clinton's savings and loan records, missing. In 1988, according to congressional investigators, Hillary Clinton, quote, ordered the destruction of records relating to her legal representation of Jim McDougal's Madison Savings and Loan when federal investigators were looking into the insolvency of the Arkansas Savings and Loan.

24:53Bill Clinton, Hillary's husband, was Arkansas governor at the time, and the Clintons and McDougal were business partners in what's known as the failed whitewater real estate venture. If you're not old enough, you probably don't know about the scandal, but it was a big one. McDougal was later convicted of fraud for attempting to use some of the savings and loan funds to cover whitewater venture losses. His wife, Susan, served prison time for refusing to answer grand jury questions about whether Bill Clinton lied in his testimony during her whitewater trial.

25:28Number two, another case of missing records, Clinton counsels Vince Foster's records. In 1993, according to a Secret Service official, First Lady Hillary Clinton's Chief of Staff Maggie Williams removed records from the office of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster the night he committed suicide. Other Clinton officials, including White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, later testified that they conducted an improper search of Foster's office.

25:59In other words, when this White House official in 1993 committed suicide in the White House, everything was supposed to, under the law, stay put as is. But we later found out that Clinton officials rifled through and went through files and removed files, at least one of them was marked Whitewater and another of them was marked Taxes. Another White House Counsel at the time, Bob Barnett, later picked up a box of Vince Foster's documents. That was deemed to be improper too. Those documents were all part of records that were going to be under investigation

26:32into Vincent Foster's supposed suicide. But Barnett, the counsel, took the records, later returned them and gave his personal guarantee that he didn't remove or alter anything. But I guess you just have to take his word for it. Associate Counsel Clifford Sloan, his contemporaneous notes from the time, cite the Clintons' initials when they say, get Maggie, go through office, get HRC WJC stuff. The significance of that is

27:04this associate counsel seems to be instructing after Vincent Foster's suicide that somebody should get Maggie, this is Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, and go through office, likely meaning Vincent Foster's office after his suicide, and get the stuff related to HRC, Hillary Clinton, and WJC, Bill Clinton. Number three, also related to this, the suicide note from Vincent Foster.

27:34Also in 1993, the White House released an official statement that falsely stated no Foster's suicide note had been found. However, eventually, White House Counsel Nussbaum turned over a suicide note to Attorney General Janet Reno, and it had been more than 24 hours after the note had been found and confiscated by them. Number four, under the category of missing records again, Hillary Clinton's law firm records. In 1996,

28:04after nearly two years of searches and subpoenas, the White House reported that it found copies of missing documents from Hillary Clinton's law firm that described her work for the controversial Madison Savings and Loan in the 1980s. The White House previously insisted it did not have the records. The originals never turned up, only these copies that were supposedly later found way after they were supposed to be turned over. Number five, now we're getting into the Bush administration.

28:35There are some Bush administration energy emails. In 2002, the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch said more than 25,000 documents were missing from records released regarding deliberations between Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force and industry executives, possibly including documents related to the infamous Enron scandal. Boy, that's bringing back memories. I broke a lot of news on that story too. The Enron scandal in 2001

29:05was one of the largest corporate frauds in history. The American energy giant at the time called Enron used, shall we say, aggressive accounting tricks and shell companies to hide massive debt and inflate profits, which fooled investors and employees until it collapsed suddenly, leading to bankruptcy, thousands of job losses, and the downfall of its auditor, Arthur Anderson, which was also found to have behaved improperly. Another one under the category of missing Clinton terrorism documents.

29:38In 2003, former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger smuggled classified documents related to the 9-11 terrorist attacks out of the National Archives. When he got caught, Berger admitted he removed handwritten notes by hiding them in his jacket, pants, and socks and also says he inadvertently took copies of classified documents. The documents were believed to be related to the after-action review about the Clinton administration's handling

30:08of the terror plots. We'll never know why Sandy Berger decided he had to go in and steal these classified documents because his mission was successful. Nobody ever got to see them. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 2005 and did not serve any time for unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents. Do you think if you or I went into an archive and stole classified documents we weren't entitled to have that we'd

30:39not have to serve jail time if we were caught? Some of the stolen copies were destroyed and never recovered. Also missing Bush administration tortured documents. In 2004, critics of the Bush administration's so-called enhanced interrogation techniques for suspected terrorists, which the critics regarded as torture, said that key documents were missing from newly declassified White House material regarding torture and other mistreatment of prisoners. The missing documents included memos

31:09to and from the FBI and CIA and a set of documents dated after April 2003. Also under the Bush administration, millions of Bush administration emails missing. In 2005, the White House says it was discovered that some emails were not properly archived. It was later revealed that missing emails were from January 3rd, 2003 to July 28th, 2005, totaling perhaps

31:395 million documents. Next under the category of lost and found, a Katrina conference call transcript. Katrina in 2005 was that giant hurricane that struck the Gulf Coast, particularly New Orleans, and caused 1,800 deaths, massive flooding, the break of levies, and there were government mishandling accusations that centered on the slow federal response, poor coordination between the state

32:10and locals, bad evacuation planning for the poor and vulnerable, delayed deployment of the National Guard, all kinds of problems. Well, in 2005, Bush administration officials told Congress that they just couldn't find the transcript of an August 29th video conference, a key conference call about Hurricane Katrina. But it turns out sometime later in 2006, officials managed to produce a transcript. Then the Bush administration's Abramoff emails missing.

32:43In 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald found that missing emails from the 2003 time period might be relevant to his criminal probe that was looking into influence peddling by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was later convicted of bribery and corruption. So again, the Bush administration had emails missing, supposedly, from 2003, and they were conveniently not available when the special counsel needed to see them as part of this influence peddling probe.

33:16There were missing Bush administration political emails. In 2007, it was revealed that 88 White House officials used Republican National Committee email accounts and that those records would have been public in nature and should have been accessible, but that the Republican National Committee preserved no emails, supposedly, for 51 of the 88 White House officials. Also missing Bush administration interrogation video,

33:46in 2007, it was discovered that the Pentagon had supposedly lost a crucial recording of an Al-Qaeda Islamic extremist terrorist operative being interrogated in a U.S. military brig. How do you lose something like that unless you want to? Here's a slightly different category, we'll call it withheld. Obama administration officials and Fast and Furious documents in 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder withheld emails regarding the Fast

34:16and Furious scandal in which federal officials secretly facilitated the delivery of thousands of assault rifles and other weapons into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. You may recall I broke a lot of news on that story. Well, President Obama invoked executive privilege to prevent some emails from being turned over to Congress or the public under subpoena. We will never get to know the full White House story on the controversial and deadly Fast and Furious program.

34:48Here's a case of a very costly set of missing records under the Obama State Department. It was revealed in 2014 that the State Department may have lost some $6 billion as a result of incomplete or missing contract records over a six-year period, mainly when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. There were missing Obama administration IRS emails. In 2014, the IRS said that it had lost key emails of Lois Lerner and other officials

35:19regarding that improper IRS targeting of conservative nonprofit groups. There are missing ObamaHealthcare.gov records. In 2014, the Obama administration revealed that records Congress was seeking in its investigation of the Obamacare website, HealthCare.gov, were missing. There were missing Obama EPA records. In 2014, the EPA told Congress it was having a lot of trouble finding emails

35:49relevant to a probe and to the environmental impact of a proposed gold and copper mine in the Bristol Bay watershed in Alaska. In a separate case, a federal judge found that the EPA willfully failed to keep emails and other records relevant to a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the delay of unpopular regulations. The judge said the records were kept and delayed until after the 2012 election so they couldn't be used as part of the

36:19re-election campaign of President Obama. Then, of course, there's the case I spoke of at more length with the former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell saying he witnessed a Benghazi document sorting session in October 2012 in the State Department basement where then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, and her deputy Jake Sullivan, he said, were present. Then, around the same time period, missing Obama EPA text messages.

36:49The EPA said it did not save text messages that were at issue in a Freedom of Information case that was seeking records about the EPA's plans to crack down on coal power plants. An EPA spokesman said that federal law didn't require those messages to be retained. I doubt that's true because I've read the law on what's supposed to be retained, but that was the argument. Let me summarize the duty of federal employees and officials. Under Federal Records Act

37:20and under federal regulations, they have a legal duty to create and preserve adequate records documenting their agency's organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions as an integral part of their daily job responsibilities. This includes emails, texts, and other electronic communications made or received in the course of business. Records belong to the agency. I will tell you that means us, the public. Records belong to the agency,

37:50not the individual, and must be maintained in official systems so they are accessible, retrievable, and protected from loss. Any use of personal accounts for official business requires copying or forwarding the material to an official account within 20 days. The law goes on to say employees may not remove, alter, or destroy records except according to approved agency record schedules. The agency heads must establish with ongoing programs safeguards

38:21against improper removal or loss. Violations can result in disciplinary action or criminal penalties. Everything I just read was violated by each of the cases that I mentioned and I'm sure there are hundreds if not thousands of such cases that I didn't capture in my brief summary. But again, very seldom is anything done about it, meaning that it is far worth it to take the chance to destroy something that could be controversial, scandalous, or show something illegal. It's certainly worth it for them to take that risk

38:52of being discovered doing that rather than letting the documents be seen. That reminds me, in the 2012-2013 time period after the Islamic extremist terrorist attacks on Americans in Benghazi killing four American diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the after-action report by the military. An after-action report is done and filed every time there's a military operation,

39:23sort of a lessons learned. While my public records request was never properly answered, maybe I should refile that now. In another perversion of Freedom of Information Act law, they're supposed to answer and turn over records within about 30 days. I've rarely, if ever, gotten a legal response within 30 days. I have some pending after a decade where once in a while I hear from a government Freedom of Information Act officer who emails me and says, it's been so long, are you still

39:53interested in receiving these records that you requested all these years ago? And I usually say yes, and I still don't get them, but I guess it just goes back into some endless process. So that is a

Federal Records Law

40:05lot of background and context when we're talking about the DOJ indictment of former Fauci advisor, Dr. David Morins. If you're interested in this topic and these facts and would like to read it or share it with somebody in text form, you can check out my sub stack, the Cheryl Ackeson sub stack, which is free. There will be a version of this posted there soon. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that you will consider sharing it, subscribing to it and leaving

40:35a great review and check out my other podcast, Full Measure After Hours. Do your own research, make up your own mind, think for yourself.