Former Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Anthony Fauci’s senior advisor, David M. Morens, pleaded guilty on Tuesday (August 18th) in a federal court in Maryland. He admitted to being involved in a scheme to conceal federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Federal prosecutor Kelly O. Hayes and FBI Special Agent Jimmy Paul from the Baltimore division, together with Marcus L. Sykes from the Office of the Inspector General, Department of Health and Human Services, jointly announced the case.
On the same day, FBI Director Kash Patel also announced this matter on the social media platform X, emphasizing that the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) will continue to jointly investigate the case because everyone is equal before the law.
Morens’ lawyer Tim Belevetz stated, “Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for his actions with today’s plea.”
Morens faces a maximum of 5 years in prison for conspiracy to defraud the US government. The actual federal sentence is usually lower than the maximum term, and a federal judge will formally determine the sentencing at a sentencing hearing in November based on the US Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
This indictment stemmed from multiple Freedom of Information Act requests received by NIAID from April 2020 to December 2022, requesting the disclosure of communication records between Morens and a New York non-profit organization and its president. Before, Morens had denied using personal emails to evade federal transparency laws while testifying before Congress.
According to information released by the Department of Justice, Morens collaborated with two co-conspirators. The first co-conspirator was the president and CEO of a New York non-profit organization that received a grant during the Obama administration for a project titled “Understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence.”
The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China received a sub-grant (approximately $600,000) for experiments such as “virus gain-of-function” from this organization. After accusations arose in April 2020 that COVID-19 originated from this laboratory, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) terminated the grant, and NIAID is under the NIH.
The second co-conspirator described in the indictment is a physician, scientist, and professor working at an academic institution receiving federal funding.
Emails publicly disclosed by the Republican-led House COVID-19 Origins Task Force show that the first co-conspirator is Peter Daszak, former president of EcoHealth Alliance.
Moreover, multiple reports and investigations have indicated Daszak’s longstanding close collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and researcher Shi Zhengli.
Morens admitted that he and his co-conspirators agreed to use personal Gmail accounts for official communications during the pandemic, deliberately circumventing the Freedom of Information Act and Federal Records Act to conceal records related to the funding from EcoHealth Alliance and the origins of COVID-19.
They also shared non-public NIH information through personal emails and provided “backstage information” to an unidentified senior NIAID official (widely speculated to be the former director of the agency, Fauci).
In the plea agreement, Morens admitted to conspiring with Daszak to receive illegal gratuities. In June 2020, Daszak sent two bottles of wine to Morens’ residence in Maryland, acknowledging his “behind-the-scenes manipulation.”
Subsequently, Morens stated that he could publish a scientific commentary in a prominent medical journal asserting that COVID-19 originated naturally, not from a lab leak, to “justify” this gift.
In response, Daszak proposed to gift Morens other valuable items or dine at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, New York, and Washington, D.C.
In 2024, Fauci had distanced himself from Morens’ case. At that time, he told US lawmakers that Morens was not his advisor on “institutional policies or other substantive issues” and acknowledged that many of Morens’ actions were wrong and violated institutional policies, while denying using personal emails for official purposes.
In July this year, when testifying before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution over 100 times to decline questions. The committee passed a vote on August 6, deeming Fauci in contempt of Congress and referring the case to the Department of Justice for review. The DOJ has stated that it is reviewing related documents.
Additionally, Republican Senators Rand Paul and Ron Johnson released some of Fauci’s text messages from his official phone in January 2021 on Sunday, August 10.
The contents show that Fauci privately mentioned to other health officials that side effects such as fever after receiving the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine may be “theoretically” related to first-trimester miscarriages in pregnant women.
After the disclosure of this conversation, many political figures and individuals criticized Fauci for being “inconsistent” in his words, alleging a clear discrepancy between his private remarks and his public emphasis on vaccine safety and encouraging pregnant women to get vaccinated.
Currently, Morens’ case has entered the sentencing phase, while the contempt of Congress referral against Fauci and related investigations are ongoing.