WASHINGTON — David Morens, a former top National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases official, was indicted Tuesday on allegations that he concealed records from Freedom of Information Act requests.
Trump administration officials said in a legal filing that Morens hid and falsified records to undermine debate about the origins of the virus that spurred the Covid-19 pandemic — and received kickbacks for doing so, including wine and offers of future meals at high-end restaurants. Morens was a senior adviser to former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, who is not named directly in the indictment.
“As alleged in the indictment, 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,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
Morens did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The indictment alleges Morens conspired with an individual who matches the description of EcoHealth Alliance’s then-president, Peter Daszak, and an unnamed third individual, to keep communications out of reach of FOIA requests by using personal email accounts.
EcoHealth was a nonprofit group focused on infectious disease threats posed by damage to the natural environment. It funded disease research, including at a Chinese lab that some have pointed to as the origin of the Covid-19 virus.
The third individual is identified as a physician and scientists who received federal research funding, though not for bat coronaviruses. The alleged conspiracy also included others, according to the indictment, and went on from mid-2020 to mid-2023.
Daszak has not been charged with any crime and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
EcoHealth lost grant funding from the National Institutes of Health after allegations that the virus that caused the pandemic emerged from a lab — China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology — that was part of the project. Morens and the third individual worked to restore the grant funding, according to the indictment, and used personal email accounts for communications related to the effort.
Morens’ indictment comes after lengthy congressional investigations into the Department of Health and Human Services’ handling of the Covid pandemic — especially issues related to the origins of the virus. Some Republican politicians have pushed the idea that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Those investigations have not turned up evidence of a lab leak, and Morens’ emails didn’t show him working to hide evidence of such an occurrence. But they did show Morens explaining how he would avoid public disclosure of his correspondence, including plans to “make emails disappear.”
Fauci has forcefully denied any knowledge of Morens’ efforts to evade federal records requirements, telling a congressional committee that he and Morens never discussed government business over private email. Separately, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has called for Fauci to be prosecuted over his testimony related to U.S. funding of research in Wuhan.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Oversight Committee, applauded the indictment in a statement Tuesday.
“The House Oversight Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic uncovered evidence revealing Dr. Morens – a top advisor to Dr. Fauci – intentionally took action to conceal and falsify records about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. We caught Dr. Morens red-handed as he boasted in emails about how the ‘FOIA lady’ coached him on how to hide records and cover-up information,” he said.
Scientists and government officials in the U.S. and globally still debate what set off the pandemic, with different U.S. government agencies favoring different hypotheses — whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus spilled from animals to people, or whether the virus escaped from a Chinese lab.
Several published scientific papers have offered findings that the virus did jump from animals to people at a market in Wuhan, and in February, many of the experts tasked by the World Health Organization to study the pandemic’s origin wrote that, while “there can be no certainty about when, where and how SARS-CoV-2 entered the human population” without additional data or new information, “most of the peer-reviewed scientific evidence supports” the natural spillover hypothesis.
President Biden, before leaving office last year, preemptively pardoned Fauci. He noted the pardon did not suggest wrongdoing but rather served as a protection against politically motivated charges.
“These are exceptional circumstances,” Biden said at the time, “and I cannot in good conscience do nothing.”
Andrew Joseph contributed reporting.