Morens and co-conspirators worked to reinstate Wuhan-linked funding and counter lab-leak questions.
By Catholics for Catholics
A former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci who had been indicted pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge Tuesday, coming from a plot to hide government records on coronavirus research grants from probers investigating the source of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A prior National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) official, David Morens, 78, copped to conspiracy to perpetrate offenses and to swindle the United States. He faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing, according to a story by the Daily Wire.
“By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did, and he will continue to do so,” said his defense attorney Timothy Belevetz.
Morens entered the plea after an April indictment.
The former high-ranking official first received backlash in 2023. The issue was that the House Oversight Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic discovered he had allegedly done official business on his personal Gmail account purposely to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests.
In 2021, Morens 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.
🚨 BREAKING: Anthony Fauci’s former senior advisor David Morens just pled GUILTY to conspiracy to defraud the US
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 18, 2026
It’s time for Morens to expose EVERYTHING about Fauci, as he pushes to get a lighter sentence 🔥
Morens was one of the key figures in burying COVID records to avoid… pic.twitter.com/O0OjPUNnii
The Daily Wire story reported that 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.
Morens was charged with hiding records linked to that grant, contending he acted with at least two other unindicted co-conspirators. Allegedly the group worked to reinstate the funding after it was finished and squash the idea that COVID-19 resulted from a laboratory incident.
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.
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