WASHINGTON — David Morens, a former top official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was indicted Tuesday on charges of concealing records from a Freedom of Information Act request.
Trump administration officials said in court documents that Morens concealed and falsified records to undermine arguments about the origins of the virus that caused the coronavirus pandemic, in exchange for kickbacks such as wine and future meals at high-end restaurants. Morens was a senior adviser to former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, who is not directly named in the indictment.
“As alleged in the indictment, Dr. Morens and his co-conspirators intentionally withheld information and falsified records for the purpose of suppressing alternative theories about the origins of COVID-19,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
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Morens did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The indictment alleges Morens conspired with a person matching the description of EcoHealth Alliance’s then-chairman Peter Daszak and an anonymous third party to use personal email accounts to place communications beyond the reach of FOIA requests.
EcoHealth is a nonprofit organization focused on the threat of infectious diseases posed by damage to the natural environment. It has funded research into the disease, including at a Chinese lab that some point to as the origin of the coronavirus.
The third person has been identified as a doctor and scientist who received federal research funding, although not for bat coronaviruses. The conspiracy, which also included others, lasted from mid-2020 to mid-2023, according to the indictment.
Daszak has not been charged with any crime and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
EcoHealth lost a grant from the National Institutes of Health following allegations that the virus that caused the pandemic originated in a lab that was part of the project, China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Morens and a third person worked to recover the grants and used personal email accounts for communications related to that effort, according to the indictment.
Morens’ indictment comes after a lengthy parliamentary investigation into the Department of Health and Human Services’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly issues related to the origins of the virus. Some Republican politicians are pushing the idea that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
These investigations found no evidence of a lab leak, and Morens’ emails show no indication that he was trying to hide evidence of such an event. But there was footage of Mr. Morens explaining how he would avoid publishing the contents of his communications, including his plan to “delete the emails.”
Mr. Fauci vehemently denied any knowledge that Mr. Morens was trying to evade federal records requirements and told a congressional committee that he never discussed government business with Mr. Morens in private email. Separately, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called for Fauci to be prosecuted over his testimony related to U.S. research funding in Wuhan.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, praised the indictment in a statement Tuesday.
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“The House Oversight Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic found evidence that Dr. Morens, Dr. Fauci’s top advisor, intentionally took actions to hide and falsify records regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. We caught Dr. Morens red-handed after he bragged in an email about how the ‘FOIA Lady’ would hide records and suppress information,” he said.
Scientists and government officials in the United States and around the world are still debating the cause of the pandemic, with various government agencies in the United States favoring different hypotheses, including whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus jumped from animals to humans or whether the virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
Several published scientific papers have presented findings that the virus was transmitted from animals to humans at a market in Wuhan, and in February, a number of experts commissioned by the World Health Organization to study the origins of the pandemic wrote that, although without additional data and new information, “we cannot be sure when, where, or how SARS-CoV-2 entered humans,” “most of the peer-reviewed scientific evidence supports the natural spillover hypothesis.”
President Biden pre-emptively pardoned Fauci before leaving office last year. He noted that the pardon does not imply wrongdoing, but rather serves as a protection against politically motivated accusations.
“This is an exceptional situation. In good conscience, we cannot afford to do nothing,” Biden said at the time.
Andrew Joseph contributed reporting.
