Fauci Adviser Pleads Guilty In COVID Records Case

Dr. David Morens, the longtime senior science adviser to Anthony Fauci, pleaded guilty this week to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States.

The 78-year-old former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases official entered the plea after an April indictment. He faces a maximum of five years in federal prison as well as a $250,000 fine, The Washington Examiner reported. 

Morens first garnered backlash in 2023. The House Oversight Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic found that he had conducted official business on his personal Gmail account specifically to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2021, he told colleagues to contact him on that personal email and said he would “delete anything [he did not] want to see in the New York Times,” per the Examiner.

The same investigation showed a personal friendship between Morens and then- EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak. That private organization received government funding for bat coronavirus research carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The $3.1 million grant titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” included a $600,000 subaward to the Wuhan lab. Some researchers who reject the animal-to-human spillover explanation have referenced that work as a possible source of SARS-CoV-2. 

Prosecutors charged Morens with concealing records related to that grant, alleging he acted with at least two other unindicted co-conspirators.  According to the case, the group worked to reinstate the funding after it was terminated and to push back against the idea that COVID-19 resulted from a laboratory incident.

Although Daszak is not named in the plea agreement, the document identifies “Co-Conspirator 1” as the author of an April 2020 email that the Washington Examiner previously reported as coming from Daszak. 

In that message, EcoHealth Alliance staff confirmed they would “communicate with [Morens] via Gmail from now on.” The plea agreement says that Morens and his co-conspirators then “plotted and repeatedly expressed their intention to conceal federal records to evade FOIA and provided information to Senior NIAID Official 1 that was favorable to Co-Conspirator 1 and Company #1.”

That senior NIAID official is widely speculated to be Fauci, who at the time was the public figure of the federal COVID-19 response.

When Fauci testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2024, he distanced himself from Morens’ email practices, saying “he should not have been doing that.” Yet, the two men co-authored more than 50 scientific papers during Morens’ tenure at the agency from 2006 to 2022. Morens also briefed Fauci ahead of key White House Coronavirus Task Force meetings in his role as top scientific adviser.

Fauci himself appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on July 29 and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times. 

Republicans voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he refused to answer questions despite a pardon from former President Joe Biden that covered the relevant period. The contempt resolution has been forwarded to the Department of Justice, which will decide whether to prosecute.

A federal judge is scheduled to sentence Morens on November 12.