Former US Official Pleads Guilty to Federal Conspiracy Charge for Concealing COVID-19 Documents

The official concerned, Dr. David Morens, has admitted conspiring with others between 2020 and 2023 to obstruct government compliance with public-records laws. The 78-year-old, who faces up to five years in prison, acknowledged deliberately using a personal Gmail account for official business so that some of his communications would remain outside normal government record-keeping systems and be harder to obtain through Freedom of Information Act requests.

The concealed communications relate to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant involving research on bat coronaviruses and EcoHealth Alliance, an organization whose work included funding research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. According to the guilty plea, Morens and his co-conspirators exchanged non-public NIH information, discussed attempts to restore funding to EcoHealth Alliance, and worked to counter claims that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory. Morens also admitted receiving gifts from an unnamed co-conspirator widely reported to be EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak. EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak were barred from receiving U.S. federal funding for five years in January 2025.

Former NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci has claimed he knew nothing about Morens’ efforts to conceal emails or his activities involving Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. Fauci himself was recently referred to the U.S. Justice Department after a Senate committee held him in contempt for refusing to answer questions about his handling of the pandemic. Former President Joe Biden had previously granted Fauci a pardon covering potential federal offenses committed between January 2014 and January 2025.

To read how emails unearthed by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee appear to contradict testimony given by Anthony Fauci on Capitol Hill, see this news story on our website.