Former Fauci Adviser Pleads Guilty in Conspiracy to Conceal COVID-19 Records

Former Fauci Adviser Pleads Guilty in Conspiracy to Conceal COVID-19 Records

My Legal Insurrection colleague Ben Smith recently reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci has declined another Senate appearance: a voluntary, transcribed interview before Sen. Ron Johnson’s investigative subcommittee.

However, Fauci isn’t the only infectious disease expert tied to the COVID-19 response who has been under scrutiny. Now a former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) pled guilty to a charge related to hiding federal records from the public during the pandemic.

Under a deal reached with federal prosecutors in Maryland, David Morens, 78, agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States. He faces up to five years in prison.

Morens, a senior adviser at NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 to 2022, was indicted in April and charged with five counts for what prosecutors said at the time was his role in a scheme to defraud the U.S. by shielding federal records related to the COVID-19 pandemic from the public.

Tim Belevetz, a lawyer for Morens, said, “By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did and will continue to do so.”

Prosecutors said Morens worked with two co-conspirators. The first, “co-conspirator 1,” served as the president and CEO of a New York-based nonprofit that received a grant in 2014 titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” The Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, received a subaward from the New York group on the coronavirus grant, prosecutors said, though the National Institutes of Health terminated the award in April 2020 following allegations that COVID-19 emerged from the lab. The NIAID is part of the NIH.

Here’s a link to the indictment.

As a reminder, Peter Daszak, then-president of the New York City–based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, was the principal investigator on a 2014 NIAID grant to the organization titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” The organization received renewed funding in 2023 after it was stripped in the wake of the pandemic. Funding to EcoHealth Alliance was once again halted in 2024.

In fact, Morens’ plea focuses on the National Institutes of Health’s decision to cancel a research grant related to bat coronavirus, based on allegations that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan lab.

The China-based lab had received a sub-award from the company that had received the grant.

Prosecutors said that Morens pledged to help restore the bat coronavirus grant and counter ⁠the ​narrative COVID-19 leaked from a lab.

Anticipating their communications would ​be sought through Freedom of Information Act requests, Morens and others agreed to correspond using Morens’ personal email account ​instead of his government one, prosecutors said.

Co-conspirator 2 has been identified via court documents as Gerald Keusch, a physician and former associate director of Boston University’s infectious disease lab.

He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

While the court filings describe Daszak and Keusch as co-conspirators, they have not been charged with any crime.

According to the factual statement agreed to by Morens and prosecutors, Morens conspired with Keusch to help restore the grant for EcoHealth Alliance after the NIH terminated it in 2020 following allegations that Covid emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was researching coronaviruses through the grant.

The indictment formally accuses Morens and the co-conspirators of using his Gmail account to “back-channel” information to Fauci.

According to the indictment, Morens explained in an email to Daszak and Keusch how he deleted some email communications between them from his NIAID account. “[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,” he wrote.

The indictment documents how Daszak recognized that their email exchanges could cause problems for them if FOIA’ed and made public. Daszak wrote: “[I]f these emails are with reporters, they’ll use them to create stories … with headlines like: Powerful cabal of scientists from within NIH helped draft anti lab-leak narrative” and ‘leading scientists conspire to undermine investigation into lab leak theory via back-channel to [senior NlAID official 1].’”

Fauci distanced himself from Morens during a 2024 congressional hearing.

Committee Republicans repeatedly pressed Fauci about a recent development they say warrants further scrutiny: an email exchange between a former NIAID senior adviser and an executive of a controversial virus research organization where the adviser claims Fauci’s private Gmail account could be utilized to evade public records requests and future public scrutiny. Ahead of the hearing, they requested access to Fauci’s personal email account and cellphone records.

Fauci rejected suggestions he used his private email in his official capacity, and both denounced and distanced himself from the adviser’s actions.

“Let me state for the record that to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business via my personal email,” Fauci said.

Records show that the colleague, Dr. David Morens, used his private Gmail account to shield information from the public’s reach, including to send EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak official government documents and a heads-up about information that would become public through a request pertaining to EcoHealth Alliance grant materials and COVID-19 research.

The Morens plea confirms what many of us have suspected all along: Taxpayer-funded science was manipulated behind closed doors to protect a preferred narrative, not to serve the public’s right to know.

With Fauci still dodging Senate questioning and co-conspirators like Daszak and Keusch still facing no charges despite their alleged roles, accountability seems…incomplete.

Real trust in public health institutions won’t be restored through plea deals alone, but via full transparency, consistent consequences for all involved, and a justice system willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

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