A former top official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has been indicted for his alleged role in a scheme to hide federal records linked to COVID-19 research grants.
David M. Morens, 78, who served as a senior advisor to former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci from 2006 to 2022, was charged Tuesday in the District of Maryland with conspiracy against the United States.
The indictment claims Morens worked with others to dodge Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by moving official government business to a personal Gmail account.
This allegedly began after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) pulled a grant titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
That grant had been awarded to a company that then provided a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Prosecutors say Morens and his associates aimed to counter the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a laboratory by keeping their internal discussions away from the public eye.
Hellbound and Down 