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A former senior US health official faces federal charges for conspiring to hide evidence on COVID’s origins — deleting records, dodging transparency laws, and taking kickbacks to protect Wuhan-linked research.

A former senior adviser to Dr Anthony Fauci has been charged for conspiring to suppress evidence that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory.

David Morens, 78, was charged by the US Department of Justice last week with conspiracy against the United States, destruction and falsification of federal records, and concealment and mutilation of government documents.

Morens served as senior advisor in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Office of the Director from 2006 to 2022. He briefed Fauci on coronavirus research and helped prepare him for appearances before Congress, the White House and the American public.

“These allegations represent a profound abuse of trust at a time when the American people needed it most — during the height of a global pandemic,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

“Dr Morens and his co-conspirators deliberately concealed information and falsified records in an effort to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19.”

Two unnamed co-conspirators, based on details in the indictment, appear to be EcoHealth Alliance president Dr Peter Daszak and Boston University NIH grantee Dr Gerald Keusch.

As previously reported by The Daily Declaration, Peter Daszak orchestrated a February 2020 open letter signed by 27 scientists that denounced the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy theory”, without disclosing that his own organisation had funded the very Wuhan research under scrutiny.

Former House COVID Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup, whose criminal referral triggered the investigation, noted that “additional indictments may follow”.

BREAKING: A former senior advisor to Anthony Fauci has been INDICTED for his role in the COVID-19 coverup

This guy might throw Anthony Fauci under the BUS 👀

David Morens and his co-conspirators FALSIFIED records in an effort to SUPPRESS the lab-leak theory, and used his… pic.twitter.com/5Wp9oc3N6y

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 28, 2026

Plotting to Evade Transparency

The Morens conspiracy began in April 2020, within days of NIH terminating a bat coronavirus grant to EcoHealth Alliance over allegations COVID-19 had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

According to the indictment, Morens immediately switched to his personal Gmail account and instructed co-conspirators to do the same.

“This is sent from my gmail account,” Morens wrote on 25 April 2020. “Please send all replies here.” He added that Fauci — referred to throughout as “Senior NIAID Official 1” — was aware of efforts to limit the damage to EcoHealth and its leadership.

The plan was explicit. On 26 April 2020, Co-Conspirator 1 — Daszak — confirmed: “We’ll communicate with you via gmail from now on.” The indictment documents the group then used that account to exchange non-public NIH records, coordinate responses to congressional inquiries, ghost-write submissions to NIH leadership, and back-channel briefing materials directly to Fauci — all in an effort to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosure.

By February 2021, Morens had sought tips from NIH’s own FOIA liaison on how to delete emails before searches began.

“I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’d but before the search starts,” he wrote, adding that he had already deleted earlier emails after forwarding them to Gmail.

By October 2021, Morens was routing everything away from government systems: “I need to scrupulously rely on those exclusively,” he wrote, referring to Gmail and his personal phone.

The scheme obstructed hundreds of FOIA requests filed between April 2020 and December 2022 — including requests from Judicial Watch, Science magazine, US Right to Know, the Heritage Foundation and the Whistleblower Protection Project.

Kickbacks and Favours

The indictment also alleges an illegal gratuity scheme running alongside the cover-up. In June 2020, Daszak sent Morens two bottles of wine for his “behind-the-scenes shenanigans” — delivered to Morens’ Maryland home.

Morens responded that he would “have to do something to deserve it”, then proposed publishing a scientific commentary advocating that COVID-19 had natural origins. The piece subsequently appeared in a prominent medical journal in July 2020, funded in part by NIAID.

Daszak followed up the next day: “Phase III might actually involve a meal — the Michelin-starred restaurants are opening in Paris — DC and New York will do eventually!”

Two months later, after NIH awarded a $7.5 million grant to EcoHealth, Morens emailed: “Do I get a kickback?” Daszak replied: “Of course there’s a kick-back. It starts with 5 more years of FOIA requests… I just hope it doesn’t culminate in 5 years in Federal jail.”

Fauci’s Proximity

Fauci is not named as a co-conspirator. He denied knowledge of Morens’ conduct in a June 2024 congressional appearance, stating Morens “was not an adviser to me on institute policy or other substantive issues”.

The indictment tells a different story about Morens’s role: he briefed Fauci on coronavirus research, prepared him for congressional appearances, and back-channelled information to Fauci specifically to keep sensitive communications off government systems.

“It might be best to connect you two in an off the record manner,” Morens wrote to Daszak in April 2021, “because we are getting FOIA’d non stop, so its most important that [Senior NIAID Official 1] not have anything on the record that could come back to bite.”

Rutgers molecular biologist Dr Richard Ebright, who has followed the case closely, said “the evidence against the three is compelling.”

“The evidence against the three is compelling,” Ebright told the New York Post. “Unless one or more flips and provides evidence against Fauci and others in exchange for immunity, all three should be, and likely will be, convicted.”

If convicted on all counts, Morens faces a maximum of 51 years in federal prison, though actual sentences are typically well below statutory maximums. He is currently on conditional release, barred from contacting his co-conspirators.

The indictment is part of a broader reckoning with pandemic-era misconduct. EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak were barred from federal funding for five years in early 2025. The US government’s official COVID website was overhauled the same year to confirm the lab leak origin and detail Fauci’s behind-the-scenes role in suppressing it.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.