Top Adviser to Anthony Fauci Pleads Guilty to Federal Conspiracy to Hide COVID-19 Research Records

David Morens, MD, a senior adviser to Anthony Fauci, MD at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), pleaded guilty in federal court on Aug. 18, 2026 to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States. The charge stems from a scheme to evade Freedom of Information Act requests and the Federal Records Act in connection with communications about coronavirus research grants. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.¹

The admission comes as Fauci invokes the Fifth Amendment before Congress, sits under a contempt of Congress referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ), and benefits from a preemptive presidential pardon covering his official conduct during the time period 2014-2024 when gain-of-function research was being done in labs in the U.S. and China on bat coronaviruses to make them more lethal and infective for humans.^{2 3}

Dr. Morens served as a senior adviser in NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 through 2022, roughly sixteen years under Dr. Fauci’s directorship. He was indicted in April on five counts. Prosecutors agreed to drop four of them in exchange for a guilty plea on the one count of conspiracy to evade public record laws regarding coronavirus research grants.^{4 5}

The Gmail Cover-Up

In April 2020, President Trump publicly stated that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) was funding research in Wuhan, China, as he declared that the funding would stop. As a result, the NIH terminated a grant to EcoHealth Alliance titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” citing that COVID most likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which had received a subaward from EcoHealth under that grant.⁶

According to the DOJ, after the termination, Morens and his co-conspirators pledged to help EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak restore the grant and “counter the narrative that COVID-19 leaked from a lab.” To evade scrutiny, they agreed to conduct all relevant communications through Morens’s personal Gmail account rather than his official NIH email, which was subject to records requests.⁷

Morens was clear about his intentions when he wrote to Daszak:

Let’s win this anti science battle, get you refunded and uber funded, then settle scores and kick some ass.⁸

In February 2021, with FOIA requests still coming in, Morens wrote that he had learned from the top FOIA official at the federal government “how to make emails disappear” after a request came in but before the formal search to fill it had begun. “So I think we are all safe,” he wrote. “Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.”⁹

Emails obtained during the investigation of Morens show that Morens and Fauci conspired to use private Gmail accounts to avoid accountability.¹⁰ In April 2021, Morens wrote that it was critical to keep communications off the official record. “It’s most important that [Fauci] not have anything on the record that could come back to bite,” he said.¹¹

Writing for Wine

The conspiracy and corruption extended beyond hiding emails. According to DOJ, Daszak sent Morens two bottles of wine to his home in gratitude for his “behind-the-scenes shenanigans.” Federal prosecutors consider the gift an illegal gratuity. The DOJ stated that Morens then identified an official act he could perform to “deserve” the gift which was authoring a scientific commentary in a prominent medical journal arguing that COVID had natural origins. In return, Daszak suggested he would also provide meals at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, New York, and Washington, DC.¹²

Morens proceeded to coauthor a 2020 paper titled “The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters,” which called COVID “a natural event” and declared that lab-origin theories “have been thoroughly discredited by multiple coronavirus experts.” The paper relied in part on a paper that Fauci privately helped write, though he is not listed as an author or contributor.¹³

Fauci’s Disappearing Fingerprints

Fauci appears throughout the court filings under the label “Senior NIAID Official 1.” In April 2020, Morens wrote to Daszak that Fauci was aware of the move to terminate the EcoHealth grant, and that there were efforts to resolve the situation “with minimal damage” to Daszak, colleagues, and the government.¹⁴

Morens further told Daszak that Fauci and then-NIH director Francis Collins, MD, PhD were “trying to protect” him, which would also protect “their own reputations.”¹⁵

Morens wrote:

I interpret this to mean that our government is lightening up but that Tony doesn’t want his fingerprints on origin stories.¹⁶

When Fauci appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2024, he proceeded to distance himself from Morens entirely.

Fauci said:

It is important to point out for the record that, despite his title, and even though he was helpful to me in writing scientific papers, Dr. Morens was not an adviser to me on institute policy or other substantive issues.

Morens, during the same hearings, said that he did not recall discussing the deletion of emails with Fauci.¹⁷

Fauci’s Pleads the Fifth

President Biden granted Fauci a preemptive pardon in early 2025, covering his official conduct from Jan. 1, 2014, to Jan. 19, 2025. The pardon effectively closed the federal criminal door on everything Fauci did while running NIAID through the pandemic years.¹⁸

However, in July 2026, Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times in order to avoid answering any questions at all. The committee, chaired by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. The referral has been sent to the DOJ, which will decide whether to pursue a criminal prosecution.¹⁹

The Investigation Continues

Daszak and Gerald Keusch, MD a retired Boston University professor, are identified as co-conspirators with Morens although neither has been charged.²⁰

In a 2025 email to Daszak, after his lawyer warned him of possible criminal charges, Morens wrote, “Please come visit me in prison and help me find a job when I get out.”²¹
Morens is scheduled to be sentenced on November 12.²²

Representative James Comer of Kentucky, former chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, warned:

No one is above the law and under the Trump Administration, overdue accountability is finally here.²³

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