April 29, 2026

A former top aide at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is now caught in a federal firestorm, accused of helping to hide pandemic records in a scheme the Justice Department says was designed to keep the public in the dark. Dr. David Morens, 78, a senior adviser to NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 to 2022, was indicted earlier this month on five counts, including conspiracy, destruction of records in federal investigations, and concealment of records, and appeared in court Monday ahead of an arraignment next week. Prosecutors allege Morens and two unnamed co-conspirators worked to defraud the U.S. by shielding COVID-era federal records, with one tied to a New York nonprofit that received a 2014 grant on bat coronavirus emergence and later a subaward involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The case lands in the long shadow of NIAID’s powerful former leader Dr. Anthony Fauci, as investigators zero in on what happened behind the scenes during the chaos of the pandemic.

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