The Justice Department (DOJ) is charging a former high-ranking health official and advisor to Anthony Fauci with conspiring against the U.S. during the Covid era. The indictment of David Morens is triggering renewed calls for similar action against Fauci, the face of America’s disastrous response to Covid-19.
Morens was a senior National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) advisor from 2006 to 2022. He is accused of hiding or destroying public email communications related to subversive efforts to steer the narrative about the origins of Covid-19, and of taking kickbacks for doing so. And he faces charges related to allegations that he worked with two co-conspirators to restore grant funding after the Department of Health and Human Services terminated its funding to a company that was operating in China’s Wuhan laboratory.
Morens faces five charges, each of which comes with a maximum sentence of between five and 20 years in prison.
He was at NIAID when unprecedented and coordinated tyranny descended on nearly the entire global population. His government position gave him great influence in what the American people were told during that time. His official job was to gather information about Covid-19 and brief senior NIAID officials, the president, Congress, and the American people on the matter. Instead, he allegedly betrayed the American people. According to the charging document, he set out to bolster the narrative that Covid-19 came from bats, despite the fact that by April 2020, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was already “reviewing allegations that [the Wuhan Institute of Virology] released the coronavirus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Kickbacks
The DOJ summarized that “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.” Moreover, “not only did Morens allegedly engage in the illegal obfuscation of his communications, but he received kickbacks for doing so.”
On July 3, 2020, Morens submitted a paper to a prominent medical journal advocating the theory that Covid-19 came from nature and not a lab, according to the indictment. The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene published Morens’ paper, titled, “The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters,” in which he wrote, “SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 emerged in China, home to bats of more than 100 species, many of which carry α- and/or β-coronaviruses.”
A few weeks later, NIH awarded a $7.5 million grant to a company whose grant had been terminated earlier in the year. On August 27, 2020, Morens emailed one of the co-conspirators using his NIH email, saying, “Ahem …. Do I get a kickback???? Too much f**king money! DO you deserve it all? Let’s discuss…” The indictment suggests Morens’ paper played a role in the grant. The co-conspirator responded the next day, saying, “Of course there’s a kick-back [sic]. It starts with 5 more years of FoIA [sic] requests […] I just hope it doesn’t culminate in 5 years in Federal jail.”
Avoiding FOIA Requests
Federal law prohibits government employees in executive agencies from using non-government messaging accounts to communicate about agency business. Employees of federal agencies are obligated to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests except in cases involving specific exceptions, caveats the government has repeatedly taken advantage of or abused.
The indictment says NIAID received hundreds of FOIA requests for public information between April 2020 and December 2022, including from Judicial Watch, Science magazine, Heritage Foundation, the Whistleblower Protection Project, and several individuals.
Many pages are dedicated to making the case that Morens and his co-conspirators were very intentional about avoiding transparency. On April 25, 2020, Morens emailed his co-conspirators, “This is sent from my gmail account. Please send all replies here To gmail […] There are things I cant say except [Senior NIAID Official 1] is aware and I have learned that there are ongoing efforts within NIH to steer through this with minimal damage to you.”
The next day, one of his co-conspirators replied, “David—We’ll communicate with you via gmail from now on.” In another email, one of his co-conspirators wrote to Morens and the other co-conspirator, “David, I’m using your email address to keep you out of the FoIA target…. Just wanted you to know that we’re still under attack here at [Company #1]. The US Right to Know [an anti-GMO, anti-vaxx group associated with Organic consumers.org] Foia’d NIH for our emails and grants. NIH refused. They’re now sued.”
During his testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on May 22, 2024, Morens said he didn’t know that using his personal Gmail account for certain communications was wrong. The charging document says otherwise.
Co-conspirators
Children Health Defense (CHD) reported that Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright believes the unnamed co-conspirators in the charging document are Peter Daszak, the former president of EcoHealth Alliance, and Dr. Gerald Keusch, a former director of the NIH Fogarty International Center, which funded foreign scientists. EcoHealth took NIH grants for coronavirus experiments at the Wuhan Lab, and has been suspected of serving as NIH’s vehicle of plausible deniability when it comes to conducting gain-of-function research.
Ebright believes “the evidence against the three is compelling.” He said that “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.”
What About Fauci?
Speaking of which, the big looming question is: What about Fauci? There’s a pile of evidence suggesting the former director of NIAID was guilty of everything Morens is being charged with. As CHD noted:
In September 2025, Sen. Rand Paul [R-Ky.] invited Fauci to testify before Congress after releasing several 2020 emails showing Fauci instructed colleagues to delete messages. The emails also showed that Fauci and other public health officials sought to ‘get ahead of the science and the narrative’ early during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paul has repeatedly accused Fauci of lying about NIAID funding for gain-of-function research, which is when scientists intentionally make a virus stronger, more infectious, and overall more dangerous. Many suspect Covid-19 is a result of gain-of-function experimentation.
Fauci worked at NIH for more than half a century, from 1968 to the end of 2022, when he retired. He became director of NIAID in 1984. He is often accused of using the same playbook of suppressing effective drugs while pushing new, profitable ones during Covid as he did during the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s.
Fauci Pardoned?
Interestingly, before ambling out of office, then-President Joe Biden supposedly pardoned Fauci for all official acts going back to 2014. Nevertheless, some are still calling for the NIAID director’s accountability, including his main congressional antagonists. “I’ve said it from the beginning: lying to Congress is a felony. Destroying federal records is a felony,” Paul said on social media on Wednesday. “Advising others to destroy federal records is a felony. Fauci did all three. His adviser was just indicted. Fauci is next. The deadline to prosecute Fauci is May 11. The DOJ must act now.”
The New York Post reported Tuesday that acting attorney general Todd Blanche “might be willing to test Trump’s assertion that former President Joe Biden’s preemptive autopen pardons, including for Fauci, are invalid.”
As Oversight Project President Mike Howell pointed out, Fauci “lied about one of the most damaging events in American history routinely and was behind a massive coverup of the key factors.” And while the Morens indictment is progress, “the people blame Fauci for one of the worst government catastrophes in history in America.”
