Anthony Fauci Adviser Indicted by DOJ on Charges of Concealing COVID Records
By Josh Christenson
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has indicted a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci for allegedly destroying and concealing records from investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
David Morens, 78, has been charged with one count of conspiracy against the United States; two counts of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; and two counts of concealment, removal, or mutilation of records.
The conspiracy also included an alleged “kickback” scheme where Morens took or was promised gifts — including wine bottles and meals at Michelin-starred restaurants — to conduct “official acts favorable” to a federal grantee.
The Department of Justice indicted COVID adviser David Morens on Tuesday for allegedly concealing records amid probes into the origins of the pandemic.
The ex-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) official faces up to 51 years in federal prison if convicted of all charges.
The indictment, unsealed Monday in Maryland federal court, also notes two unnamed co-conspirators who “concealed, removed, destroyed and caused the concealment, and removal of federal records to evade FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] and FRA [Federal Records Act].”
Information in the indictment indicates the co-conspirators are Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of Manhattan-based non-profit EcoHealth Alliance, and Dr. Gerald Keusch, an associate director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory Institute and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grantee.
Former House COVID Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup told The Post Tuesday that “additional indictments may follow.”
“The repercussions of these actions have caused significant damage to the public health system, and recovery may take considerable time due to the involvement of numerous individuals within various agencies,” he said. “The ongoing pursuit of justice is essential for the well-being of the American people.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci is seen at the 33rd Annual White House Correspondents’ Garden Brunch in Washington, DC, on Saturday, April 25, 2026.
Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, added that “the evidence against the three is compelling.”
“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,” said Ebright, who noted Keusch approved the first EcoHealth grant awarded to the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2002.
Fauci, who left government service in December 2022, is also referred to as “Senior NIAID Official 1” in multiple communications cited in the indictment — but not named as a co-conspirator.
Morens, who is currently on conditional release, must “avoid all contact” with the co-conspirators, who between April 2020 and June 2023 sought with him to reinstate millions of dollars in federal grants for EcoHealth and burnish its public image, according to the 29-page indictment.
Those included grants totaling $4 million and $7.5 million awarded to the nonprofit in 2014 and 2020, respectively, some of which eventually funded gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at WIV.
“There are things I can’t say except Tony is aware and I have learned that there are ongoing efforts within NIH to steer this through with minimal damage to you, Peter, and colleagues, and to NIH and NIAID,” Morens wrote to Daszak and Keusch in an April 26, 2020, email from a private account.
Daszak then provided “illegal gratuities” — two bottles of “The Prisoner Red Napa Valley Wine” — to Morens’ home in Maryland in June 2020, the indictment revealed in previously unreported emails.
“This is the first of what I hope will be a continued series of expressions [sic] of gratitude for your advice, support, and behind-the-scenes shenanigans in my battle against your boss’s boss, his boss, and the ultimate boss on the hill,” Daszak wrote in a message accompanying the June 25 gift.
“Now I am actually going to have to do something to deserve it. Let me think,” Morens responded in a Gmail message the same day, before suggesting he could publish “scientific commentary” that “outlines the importance” of EcoHealth’s work.
On June 26, Daszak wrote back: “Consider this my phase II gift. Phase III might actually involve a meal – the Michelin-starred are opening in Paris, DC, and New York will do eventually!”
Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks at a press conference in January 2020.
The NIAID director and then-NIH head Dr. Francis Collins had, in February 2020 “prompted” the notorious “Proximal Origins” paper that sought to downplay concerns about COVID leaking out of a Chinese lab, instead claiming that the outbreak was consistent with a natural origin for SARS-CoV-2.
But the scientific commentary to which Morens was referring appears to be a July 2020 paper published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene that also advocates for a natural spillover theory of the virus and “significantly increased funding for basic and applied research addressing disease emergence.”
Emails published by Wenstrup’s subcommittee — and cited in the indictment — showed Morens asking Daszak directly “do I get a kickback?” about the $7.5 million grant he secured for EcoHealth.
Daszak responded in the August 2020 email exchange, “of course there’s a kick-back,” before musing: “I hope it doesn’t culminate in 5 years in Federal jail.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, right, and US Attorney Jeanine Pirro speak during a news conference at the Department of Justice on Monday, April 27, 2026, in Washington, DC.
Morens frequently conducted government business from his Gmail account — and a “secret back channel” with his boss — while asking the NIH’s FOIA liaison for tips on how to evade records requests, according to communications first exposed by The Post in May 2024.
“[T]here is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private Gmail [sic], or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote in one April 21, 2021, email. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”
Two months prior, Morens said in a Feb. 24 email: “[I] learned from our foia [sic] lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d [sic] but before the search starts.”
Morens also told Keusch in a May 13, 2021, email that he “connected” a colleague with Fauci on “our ‘secret’ back channel.”
On Sept. 9, 2021, Morens wrote that he would “always communicate on Gmail [sic] because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly” and “delete anything I don’t want to see in the New York Times.”
Prosecutors say those actions obfuscated the American public’s access to information sought in “hundreds” of FOIA requests, including from US Right To Know, Science magazine, and the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Many sought information about a now-infamous grant to EcoHealth Alliance, overseen by Morens and beginning in 2014, that funneled US taxpayer dollars to bat coronavirus research in Wuhan, China, where the COVID pandemic emerged in late 2019.
EcoHealth ultimately gave more than $1.4 million to WIV to conduct “genetic experiments to combine naturally occurring bat coronaviruses with SARS and MERS viruses, resulting in hybridized (also known as chimeric) coronavirus strains,” according to a June 2023 Government Accountability Office report.
The project — suspended during the pandemic and briefly reinstated in 2023 — included risky gain-of-function experiments on the viruses that made them 10,000 times more infectious, violating the NIH grant’s terms.
NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak finally confirmed the experiments occurred in sworn congressional testimony on May 16, 2024 — after more than four years of denials — but denied they were the cause of the pandemic.
Dr. David Morens speaks at a hearing on Capitol Hill in 2024.
But another EcoHealth proposal that was never funded, known as Project DEFUSE, has been flagged by scientists and lawmakers for containing a “blueprint” for creating the virus that causes COVID-19. To Read Full Article Click Here
Original source: https://nypost.com/2026/04/28/us-news/anthony-fauci-adviser-indicted-by-department-of-justice/