New Delhi: David Morens, a former senior advisor to Dr Anthony Fauci, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiracy to conceal federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic in a Maryland court. Morens is a former employee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is led by Fauci, from 1984 to 2022.
Fauci also served as the Chief Medical Adviser to the US President from 2021 to 2022, and helmed the COVID-19 Response Team under former US President Joe Biden. Morens worked with Fauci at the NIAID and served as his senior adviser from 2006 to 2022.
A press release by the US Attorney’s Office, District of Maryland, said that Morens pled guilty to a conspiracy to ‘commit offences and defraud the US government.’ Morens was initially indicted in April 2026 in a federal criminal case that dealt with the evasion of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to a COVID-19 research grant.
The Freedom of Information Act is a US federal law that grants the public the legal right to request and access records and information held by U.S. government agencies.
“David M. Morens, 78, of Chester, Maryland, is charged with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations,” said the April press release by the US Department of Justice.
DOJ’s conspiracy charge
The document said that Morens worked with EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based NGO named Co-Conspirator 1, which had received a grant from the US National Institutes of Health for a research project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” in June 2014. Part of this grant money was sub-awarded by EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China, which is named as Co-Conspirator 2.
However, the NIH terminated the grant in 2020, amid concerns surrounding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
In his plea deal, Morens said that he continued conversations with both Co-Conspirators, including about reinstating the grant. He also said that he moved their conversations to his personal email ID, so that it would not be revealed to the public, in case his records are demanded through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“In anticipation that their communications would be requested through a FOIA Request, Morens, Co-Conspirator 1, and Co-Conspirator 2 agreed in writing to intentionally hide from public view,” said the DOJ press release.
While the grant was not eventually reinstated, the DOJ said that every single communication item fell within Morens’ role as a senior adviser, and constituted a ‘federal’ record. This formed the basis of the DOJ’s conspiracy charge against Morens. In his plea deal, Morens also admitted to accepting ‘illegal’ gratuities and gifts of wine and expensive meals from the other Co-Conspirators.
If he is convicted, Morens would face a maximum of five years of prison for conspiracy against the United States. The sentence will, however, be determined by a federal judge at a later date.
“Circumventing records protocols with the intention of avoiding transparency is something that will not be tolerated by this FBI,” said FBI Director Kash Patel in the press release.
In a post on X afterward, Patel also said that the FBI investigation into the matter would continue, and that “no one is above the law.”
Also read: How a scientific ‘consensus’ covered up Covid origins. The emperor has no clothes
Fauci, Morens and COVID-19
Morens’ plea deal comes a few weeks after Anthony Fauci made an appearance in a Senate panel where he was questioned about the COVID-19 pandemic and he refused to answer by pleading his Fifth Amendment rights.
The conflicts regarding Fauci and Morens in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic arose as part of a debate in the US Congress in 2021, in which lawmakers questioned the origins of the SARS COV-2 virus in Wuhan, China. In 2023, the US Congress passed legislation asking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify documents relating to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Covid-19 origins, including the suspected role of US funding.
While the ODNI report remained unclear about whether Covid-19 originated in a lab or in a live market in Wuhan, it did lead to a chain of reactions, including the US government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding certain pathogen research in Wuhan, such as the grant that EcoHealth Alliance received.
Congressional debates after 2023 revolved around greater control over US funding of pathogen research overseas, according to the New York Post. In 2023, the US also banned the Wuhan Institute of Virology from accessing any US funding for the next 10 years.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)