Former NIAID Senior Adviser Pleads Guilty to Concealing Federal Records During COVID-19 Pandemic
A former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has pleaded guilty to a charge related to concealing federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic. David Morens, 78, agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States, facing up to five years in prison. Morens, who worked at NIAID from 2006 to 2022, was indicted in April for his involvement in a scheme to hide federal records related to the pandemic. Tim Belevetz, Morens' lawyer, stated that Morens took responsibility for his actions by pleading guilty.
Prosecutors revealed that Morens collaborated with two co-conspirators, one of whom was the president and CEO of a New York-based nonprofit that received a grant related to understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence. The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China received a subaward from the New York group on the coronavirus grant. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) terminated the award in April 2020 amid allegations that COVID-19 originated from the lab. Morens and his co-conspirators exchanged emails about COVID-19 and the terminated grant through his personal Gmail account to evade public records laws.
The indictment was based on Freedom of Information Act requests NIAID received between April 2020 and December 2022 seeking communications between Morens, the New York-based nonprofit, and its president. Morens and his co-conspirators used his personal Gmail account to share nonpublic information about COVID-19 and communicated with an unidentified senior NIAID official, likely Anthony Fauci, the institute's former director. Morens admitted to receiving illegal gratuities, including two bottles of wine, for his actions related to the pandemic.
Congressional Republicans investigated the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the theory of a lab leak and Fauci's management of the crisis. Fauci and Morens testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2024. Morens was questioned about attempts to bypass public records rules, while Fauci distanced himself from Morens' actions, stating that Morens was not his adviser on institute policy. Fauci faced scrutiny from Republicans, with public release of his text messages and diary entries during the pandemic. Fauci recently appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, invoking the Fifth Amendment and refusing to answer questions.