Former Fauci advisor Dr. David Morens faces prison after pleading guilty to concealing COVID records
Dr. David Moren has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge involving the concealment of government records related to COVID-19 research.
Moren, who served as a senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a central figure in a congressional investigation into the origins of coronavirus.
Congress obtained emails in 2024 that found that Moren used his personal email address for government-related business so that his enquiries couldn't be subjected to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) like his government account would have done.
Per POLITICO, in a 2021 email, Moren bragged that he knew how to 'make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d'.
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Moren was indicted in April for allegedly trying to hide email exchanges by using his personal address, which he pleaded guilty to on Tuesday (August 18).
"By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did, and he will continue to do so," his legal counsel, Tim Belevetz, told NPR.
The 78-year-old now faces up to five years in prison on the felony conspiracy charge and a fine of up to $250,000. He is due to be sentenced on November 12.
While Morens could face five years imprisonment, apparently it's rare that defendants are handed the maximum sentence, particularly for first-time offenders.
Morens' guilty plea comes after private text messages from former Chief Medical Advisor to the US president Dr. Anthony Fauci were released. He'd sent numerous messages about how the vaccine affects pregnant individuals.
In one text to Dr. Vivek Murthy, a then-advisor to President Biden, he said: "Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester."
A few months later the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) formally recommended that pregnant women get the COVID-19 vaccination as it was found that it posed no risk to them or their unborn child.
Elsewhere, on August 6, US Senate committee voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress over his refusal to answer questions at a hearing on his handling of the pandemic.
It set up a referral to the Department of Justice for potential investigation over whether the country’s long-time top infectious disease official properly exercised his constitutional rights.
The vote approving the contempt resolution came a week after Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, an episode that raised fresh legal questions about the ability of the US congress to compel evidence from a previously pardoned witness.
If the Department of Justice chooses to prosecute and he is convicted of criminal contempt, the charge carries a potential sentence of up to one year in prison.
Topics: Politics, US News, Health, Coronavirus
Niamh Shackleton