https://nypost.com/2026/08/18/us-news/fauci-adviser-pleads-guilty-to-charges-connected-to-the-concealment-of-covid-19-related-records/
"As part of the plea deal, Morens, 78, admitted that between April 2020 and June 2023 he conspired with two unnamed co-conspirators and others to “defraud the United States by hampering, hindering, impeding, or obstructing, by craft, trickery, deceit or dishonest means, the lawful and legitimate functions” of public health agencies from complying with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Federal Records Act (FRA) – including by destroying and concealing records related to the termination and restoration of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for research on bat coronaviruses"
AI GENERATED
According to court documents and federal prosecutors, Dr. David Morens’ primary goal in concealing his communications was to evade federal transparency laws—specifically the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Federal Records Act—in order to protect himself and his co-conspirators while pursuing specific policy and narrative objectives.
His actions were driven by two main motives:
1. Protecting and Restoring Research Funding
Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) terminated a controversial research grant—"Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence"—which had been awarded to EcoHealth Alliance and included a sub-award to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Morens conspired with others, including EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, to influence the NIH to restore this terminated grant. By keeping their discussions regarding these efforts off of official government email accounts, they sought to prevent these conversations from being discovered through FOIA requests and public scrutiny.
2. Controlling the Narrative on COVID-19 Origins
Morens and his co-conspirators worked to counter the "lab-leak" narrative—the theory that COVID-19 may have originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
* "Behind-the-scenes shenanigans": Morens used his personal Gmail account to exchange non-public information, coordinate their efforts to influence NIH policy, and share "back-channel" information with senior NIAID officials.
* Influencing public opinion: Prosecutors noted that Morens’ efforts included advocating for the "natural origins" theory of the virus in scientific journals while simultaneously working to ensure that internal debates or conflicting information remained hidden from the public.
How they did it
To achieve these goals, Morens intentionally avoided using his official NIH email, which was subject to mandatory record-keeping and public disclosure requests. In his plea, he admitted to using his personal Gmail account to ensure his communications could not be reached by investigators or the public. He even went as far as to delete emails from his government account after sending them to his personal account and boasted about knowing how to make emails "disappear" before a FOIA search could be conducted.
