An indicted former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge Tuesday stemming from a scheme to conceal government records on coronavirus research grants from investigators probing the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
David Morens, a former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) official, copped to conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States. He faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing.
“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.
As part of the plea deal, Morens, 78, admitted that between April 2020 and June 2023 he conspired with two unnamed co-conspirators and others to “defraud the United States by hampering, hindering, impeding, or obstructing, by craft, trickery, deceit or dishonest means, the lawful and legitimate functions” of public health agencies from complying with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Federal Records Act (FRA) – including by destroying and concealing records related to the termination and restoration of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for research on bat coronaviruses.
Morens admitted to conducting government business through his personal Gmail account following the termination of the NIH bat coronavirus research grant to intentionally hide his communications with his co-conspirators from FOIA requests and public view.
Morens, then a senior adviser to Fauci, pledged to help alleged co-conspirator 1 – believed to be Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of Manhattan-based non-profit EcoHealth Alliance – counter the narrative that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China.
Over Gmail, Morens and his alleged co-conspirators exchanged “non-public NIH information,” discussed “their efforts to influence NIH to fund” EcoHealth Alliance, exchanged edits to draft letters to NIH leadership on behalf of Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance; and “back-channel” information to Fauci, referred to as “Senior NIAID Official 1” in court documents.
Morens further admitted in his guilty plea that Daszak provided him with “illegal gratuities,” including two bottles of The Prisoner Red Napa Valley Wine — which retail for about $40. --->READ MORE HERE
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| GOP Oversight/YouTube |
Dr. David Morens pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge ‘to commit offenses and to defraud the United States.’
In a major step toward accountability, a senior advisor to Dr. Anthony Fauci pled guilty on Tuesday to partaking in a “scheme” to dodge open records requests related to coronavirus research grants.
According to the Department of Justice, Dr. David Morens pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge “to commit offenses and to defraud the United States.” Morens was indicted by federal prosecutors in April and previously served as a senior advisor to Fauci — the now-former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — from 2006-2022.
In summarizing the guilty plea, the DOJ said that Morens and two co-conspirators “conspired” during the Covid outbreak to defraud America after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “terminated the grant, Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, based on allegations” that the Covid-19 virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. The agency noted that the Fauci-led NIAID “awarded the grant to Company 1 and Co-Conspirator 1, who made a subaward to the WIV.”
Some observers have suggested that Co-Conspirator 1 is former EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak. As Federalist Senior Contributor Helen Raleigh previously reported, from 2014-2020, EcoHealth sent “more than half a million dollars’ worth of U.S. government grants, including those from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with Anthony Fauci’s approval, to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.”
Similar to Fauci, Daszak previously dismissed the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy theor[y].”
The Department of Health and Human Services formally cut off federal funding and debarred EcoHealth and Daszak last year for five years over the organization’s reckless coronavirus research.
The DOJ noted that Morens and Co-Conspirator 2 “pledged” to assist Co-Conspirator 1 with getting the bat coronavirus grant restored and to squash the credible lab leak theory. The agency said that Morens and his co-conspirators “agreed in writing to intentionally hide their communications from public view by corresponding using Morens’s personal Gmail account, rather than his official NIH email account,” in anticipation that their communications would be subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. --->READ MORE HERE
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