Top Fauci Adviser Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy To Hide COVID Records From Public

A former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, admitting he worked to conceal federal records and evade public records laws during the COVID-19 pandemic. David Morens faces up to five years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on November 12.Morens, 78, served as a senior adviser in the NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 to 2022, where he briefed NIAID Director Anthony Fauci on COVID-19 research and helped shape the agency’s pandemic response. Under a deal reached with federal prosecutors in Maryland, Morens pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States.“By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did, and he will continue to do so,” his attorney, Timothy Belevetz, said in a statement.According to prosecutors, Morens conspired with two co-conspirators — later identified through congressional documents as EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak and an unnamed physician-scientist — to route official government communications through Morens’ personal Gmail account in order to evade Freedom of Information Act requests. The scheme began in April 2020, after the National Institutes of Health terminated EcoHealth Alliance’s bat coronavirus grant following allegations that COVID-19 had emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.Emails uncovered by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic showed the extent of the cover-up. In one message, Morens boasted: “I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe.” In another, he wrote that he could pass information to Mr. Fauci via “his private Gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”Prosecutors also allege that Morens used these back-channel communications to solicit NIH support for EcoHealth Alliance’s grant restoration and to help shape the public narrative around COVID-19’s origins. In exchange, Mr. Daszak gifted Morens two bottles of wine for his “behind-the-scenes shenanigans” and offered future perks, including meals at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, New York, and Washington, D.C.Mr. Fauci has sought to distance himself from his former colleague. In his 2024 congressional testimony, Mr. Fauci said, “I knew nothing of Dr. Morens’s actions regarding Dr. Daszak, EcoHealth, or his emails,” adding that Morens “was not an advisor to me on [NIAID] policy or other substantive issues.” Mr. Fauci denied using his personal email to conduct official business.Mr. Fauci’s own legal exposure has grown in recent months. When he appeared last month before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The Senate panel subsequently voted to hold Mr. Fauci in contempt of Congress, and the referral has been sent to the Justice Department.Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a persistent critic of Mr. Fauci, responded to Morens’ guilty plea on X with a pointed question: “Could his plea involve implicating Anthony Fauci?”

Top Fauci Adviser Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy To Hide COVID Records From Public

Top Fauci Adviser Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy To Hide COVID Records From Public

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