WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - Although Dr. Anthony Fauci will resign as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in December, a lawsuit Judicial Watch filed in July is not moot, according to former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill.
Judicial Watch sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after it failed to respond to an April 8 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from OpenTheBooks.com to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) requesting records regarding Fauci’s wife Christine Grady, who is chief of the Department of Bioethics.
“He still is in his position until December, has been in his position and she's been in her position so I think it's certainly worth a review as to whether there were any improprieties with respect to their professional and personal relationship,” Hill said.
Fauci announced his resignation last week after 38 years in the position. He is 81 years old.
"I'm glad he is resigning because I think public confidence in Anthony Fauci is at an extremely low point," Hill told Legal Newsline. "I believe that he has misled the public, whether it was mistakenly or intentionally and the confidence in his ability to lead that agency eroded quite some time ago."
Earlier this month, Hill declared his interest in the vacancy left by the late Congresswoman Jackie Walorski’s death, according to media reports. However, the statewide Republican caucus nominated Rudolph Yakym, who had been Walorski’s finance director.
The Judicial Watch lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the court to require the department to search for and produce all employment contracts, modifications, and addendums regarding Grady since her hiring and requests an order that the department stop withholding non-exempt records related to the FOIA request.
“If it's later determined that there was some contract awarded as a result of a personal relationship, that's still something that can be reviewed by an inspector general or some investigative agency that would be responsible for oversight,” Hill said.
An Open the Books investigation found that Fauci allegedly enjoyed more than $350 million in hidden payments from drug companies and other third parties in a decade, according to a Judicial Watch press release.
"Certainly in a situation like that, if a relationship is not completely prohibited, it needs to be transparent and disclosed so that everybody is on notice that there should be a heightened degree of scrutiny on any particular contract that's awarded because of that relationship,” Hill added.