With Pam Bondi out (related?), the U.S. Department of Justice announced today that it has indicted Dr. David M. Morens, a longtime senior advisor to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci. The 78-year-old Morens faces charges including conspiracy against the United States, destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations, concealment, removal, or mutilation of records, and aiding and abetting.

According to the indictment, Morens allegedly used his personal Gmail account to evade Freedom of Information Act requests and worked with others to conceal communications related to COVID-19 research grants during the pandemic.

Morens served as Senior Scientific Advisor in NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 through 2022 - advising senior leadership, including Fauci, on policy matters, infectious disease issues, and aspects of COVID-19 origins research. He also gathered information from grantees and the scientific community and helped prepare briefings for Fauci to use with the White House, Congress, and the public.

The Congressional Investigation

The indictment follows years of scrutiny by Congress. In June 2023, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic began obtaining emails showing that Morens had been using his personal Gmail account for official government business specifically to avoid FOIA disclosures. Over the following months the subcommittee issued document requests and subpoenas, conducted transcribed interviews with Morens in December 2023 and January 2024, and ultimately obtained tens of thousands of additional pages from his personal email account in late April 2024.

As Paul Thacker of the DisInformation Chronicle noted in 2024, the subcommittee released a detailed staff memo and more than 150 pages of emails on May 22, 2024, documenting what it described as serious questions about potential wrongdoing and illegal activity by Morens. The emails included discussions of deleting records and routing sensitive communications through personal accounts.

Sen. Ron Johnson had raised similar concerns even earlier. In November 2023 he wrote to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Inspector General Christi Grimm, stating that Morens’ actions may have directly obstructed congressional oversight efforts related to NIAID activities during the pandemic.

Key Emails

Two emails in particular have drawn significant attention. In a February 24, 2021 message to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance and Gerald Keusch, Morens wrote that he had learned from an NIH FOIA official “how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe. Plus, I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to Gmail."

In an April 21, 2021 email to Daszak, Morens added: “PS, I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble." (“Tony" refers to Anthony Fauci.)

These messages, along with others detailing coordination with EcoHealth Alliance after its NIH grant was terminated, formed a central part of the congressional record.

'Tie Your Shoe'

On May 22, 2024, Morens appeared for a public hearing before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. He faced questions from both Republican and Democratic members about the emails, his relationship with Daszak, and his role in efforts to restore EcoHealth’s terminated grant and shape public messaging around COVID-19 origins.

During the hearing, Morens was confronted with evidence that he:

• Edited compliance letters and press releases for EcoHealth Alliance
• Wrote to the EcoHealth board on Daszak’s behalf when the latter feared being fired
• Used personal email to route information to Fauci while attempting to avoid FOIA
• Discussed methods for deleting or hiding emails after FOIA requests had been filed

As Paul Thacker writes: 

Reading back to Morens passages from his own emails and prior congressional testimony, Chairman Brad Wenstrup forced Morens to confirm that he had conspired with EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak to restore Daszak’s NIH grant. Morens admitted that he edited a compliance letter Daszak sent to the NIH, edited an EcoHealth Alliance press release after NIH terminated Daszak’s grant, and “put in a word” to the EcoHealth Alliance board when Daszak was worried about being fired.

Ranking Member Raul Ruiz berated Morens at several points, saying his actions were a “stain on the legacy” of the NIH and his colleagues. After Wenstrup banged down his gavel to end the hearing, Morens remained seated and was approached by his lawyer, white collar crime attorney Timothy Belevetz.

Leaning into his client’s ear, Belevetz whispered, “Before you get up, tie your shoe.”

Today’s DOJ Indictment

The indictment alleges that after NIH terminated EcoHealth Alliance’s grant Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence — which included a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology — Morens and unnamed co-conspirators conspired to help restore the grant and counter the lab-leak narrative. The charges further claim that Morens used his personal Gmail account to hide these communications from public view and that he received illegal gratuities, including wine delivered to his home, in connection with official acts favorable to EcoHealth.

Maximum penalties if convicted:

• Conspiracy against the United States: up to 5 years in prison
• Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations: up to 20 years per count
• Concealment, removal, or mutilation of records: up to 3 years per count

An indictment is not a finding of guilt. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Timeline of Key Events

• 2020–2021: Key emails written regarding FOIA avoidance, back-channel communications, and coordination with EcoHealth Alliance
• June 2023: House Select Subcommittee begins obtaining Morens’ personal emails
• October 2023: Morens subpoenaed for documents
• November 2023: Sen. Ron Johnson raises concerns with HHS leadership about potential obstruction of oversight
• December 2023 and January 2024: Morens gives transcribed interviews to the subcommittee
• April 2024: Additional subpoena issued; Morens produces roughly 30,000 pages of emails
• May 22, 2024: Public hearing held and staff memo plus 155 pages of emails released
• June 3, 2024: Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies before the subcommittee
• April 28, 2026: Department of Justice indicts David Morens

Broader Context: The Offshoring of Risky U.S. Research

In 2014, the Obama administration imposed a pause on federal funding for certain gain-of-function research on pathogens such as influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses, citing serious biosafety concerns following several laboratory incidents. The moratorium was lifted in 2017, but by then much of the work had effectively moved overseas. EcoHealth Alliance, led by Peter Daszak, continued receiving millions in NIH grants for bat coronavirus research - with a significant portion funneled through subawards to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China.

Related: 

At the same time, University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric - one of the world’s leading experts on coronaviruses - had been collaborating closely with WIV scientists, including Shi Zhengli, in work described in a 2018 DEFUSE funding proposal (that was rejected by DARPA) to create an aerosolized bat covid that could infect humans. Baric’s lab created “humanized mice” expressing the human ACE2 receptor and engineered chimeric viruses to study how bat coronaviruses could jump to humans. Much of this high-risk work, which had previously been conducted on U.S. soil, was effectively transferred to the WIV - located in the very city where COVID-19 first emerged. 

Details of the DEFUSE project were first leaked by Major Joseph Murphy, an employee of US military research agency DARPA, in the summer of 2021 and further details of earlier drafts have come to light this month thanks to public record requests from U.S. Right to Know (USRTK).

In DEFUSE, Baric proposed to create a virus that was, to most intents and purposes, SARS-CoV-2. The proposal included inserting a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus spike protein, an order for the restrictive enzyme BsmBI, the search for a binding domain that would infect ACE2 human receptors and a requirement for a viral genome around 25% different to SARS.

One down (until Boasberg knights him), many to go.