A group of House Republican ranking members sent a letter to Biden’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra questioning the legality of every appointed director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The group sent the letter to Becerra demanding documentation from the department that shows reappointments for any current NIH institute or center directors, which includes Anthony Fauci.
The Republicans, claiming that there has been no announcement of “reappointments,” cited the law stating, “Each Director of a national research institute or national center who is serving on December 13, 2016, shall be deemed to be appointed for a 5 – year term under this subsection beginning on such date.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to the president, testifies before a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to examine the federal response to COVID-19 and new emerging variants, Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)
In general, any appointed director should be “appointed by the President, and the Directors of the other national research institutes and national centers shall be appointed by the Secretary, acting through the Director of National Institutes of Health.” And every director should be reporting directly to the director of NIH.
“Thus, all current National Institutes of Health (NIH) institute or center directors who were serving as of December 13, 2016, would have needed to be reappointed on December 13, 2021, to continue serving,” the group of Republicans wrote. “We are not aware of any public announcements of the reappointments for any current NIH institute or center directors.”
The group of Republicans — consisting of House Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Subcommittee on Health Ranking Member Brett Guthrie (R-KY), and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Ranking Member H. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) — asked for “all documentation showing the reappointments of the NIH institute and center directors by March 24, 2022, to confirm the reappointments.”
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.
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