An investigation conducted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee reveals that 14 National Institutes of Health officials, including former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, were not properly reappointed to their positions in December of 2021, as required by law.
The Biden administration allegedly failed to correctly reappoint more than a dozen top-ranking National Institutes of Health leaders, House Republicans say, raising questions about the legality of billions in federal grants doled out by those officials over the last year.
"Institute directors with discretion to award billions or even hundreds of millions in research funding are, by definition, exercising significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States. As such, institute directors are the quintessential 'inferior officers,'" a former senior HHS official told CBS News.
"We write raising serious concerns about your failure to follow the law and ensure accountability of billions of dollars in taxpayer funding at the National Institutes of Health. As detailed below, it has become apparent that you, as Secretary of Health and Human Services, did not reappoint a number of Institute and Center Directors at the NIH.".
Section 2033 of the 21st Century Cures Act, titled Increasing Accountability at the National Institutes of Health, lays out the framework by which NIH IC Directors must be appointed and reappointed.
Specifically, it requires the Secretary of HHS to reappoint NIH IC Directors, including those who were serving at the time of the law's enactment when their five-year terms expired on December 12, 2021.
The Chairs' investigation revealed that Secretary Becerra failed to reappoint these 14 NIH IC Directors, calling into question the validity of any decision made by a director between December 2021 and June 2023.
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