An NIH FOIA Officer Coached Fauci's Aide to Hide Emails

David Morens, 78, spent 16 years as senior scientific advisor to Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. On April 28, a federal grand jury indicted him on four counts: conspiracy against the United States, destruction and falsification of federal records, concealment of federal records, and aiding and abetting. The conspiracy charged in the indictment ran from mid-2020 to mid-2023.

The detail that separates this from a personal email scandal is what prosecutors call "the FOIA lady." Representative James Comer said Morens boasted in writing about how an NIH FOIA officer coached him on what records could be kept from public view. He did not invent the method. He was given it. That is a different kind of institutional failure.

The grant at the center of the indictment is "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," an NIH-funded project administered by a U.S. nonprofit that subcontracted work to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The indictment describes Co-Conspirator 1 as head of that nonprofit, a description that maps to EcoHealth Alliance and its then-president Peter Daszak with no apparent alternative. NIH terminated the grant after allegations that COVID-19 may have originated in a laboratory. The indictment alleges Morens and his co-conspirators then coordinated through personal email accounts to restore the funding and push back against lab-leak theories.

The documentary record is specific. In one email, Morens allegedly wrote that he needed to keep correspondence "off of USG emails for obvious reasons" because he was "under multiple FOIAs already." In another, he advised a co-conspirator to connect with a senior NIAID official "in an off the record manner" because "we are getting FOIA'd non stop." The co-conspirator whose description matches Daszak allegedly sent two bottles of wine to Morens's home with a thank-you note for "behind-the-scenes shenanigans."

During this same period, the indictment alleges, Morens wrote a scientific commentary claiming COVID-19 had natural origins. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche described the scheme as an effort "to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19." The two tracks operated in parallel: route the contradicting documents off federal servers, publish the approved conclusion. One strategy, two instruments.

What the indictment does not address is as notable as what it does. The NIH FOIA officer who allegedly coached Morens has not been charged. Co-Conspirator 2, described as a physician and scientist receiving federal research funding, has not been charged. The unnamed senior NIAID official reached through the back channel has not been charged. A conspiracy statute requires more than one person. Morens appears as one node in a network whose other nodes remain unnamed in federal court.

A 2024 House select committee memorandum had already laid out some of the same alleged wrongdoing. The indictment follows that paper trail into federal court. The question the trial will have to answer is not only whether Morens concealed records, but whose method he was using.