Former NIAID Adviser Pleads Guilty to Scheme to Hide Records During the COVID Pandemic

It's too bad for David Morens that he didn't get one of those blanket pardons that President Joe Biden handed out to his former colleague, Anthony Fauci. Morens, a former senior advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has pleaded guilty to taking part in a scheme to hide federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has pleaded guilty to a charge stemming from a scheme to hide federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://t.co/kZBvYl9RPJ
— CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil (@CBSEveningNews) August 18, 2026

No kidding … https://t.co/qcsbQ0ZX5f
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 19, 2026

Melissa Quinn reports for CBS News:

A former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has pleaded guilty to a charge stemming from a scheme to hide federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under a deal reached with federal prosecutors in Maryland, David Morens, 78, agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States. He faces up to five years in prison.
Morens, a senior adviser at NIAID's Office of the Director from 2006 to 2022, was indicted in April and charged with five counts for what prosecutors said at the time was his role in a scheme to defraud the U.S. by shielding federal records related to the COVID-19 pandemic from the public.
…
Prosecutors said Morens worked with two co-conspirators. The first, "co-conspirator 1," served as the president and CEO of a New York-based nonprofit that received a grant in 2014 titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence." The Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, received a subaward from the New York group on the coronavirus grant, prosecutors said, though the National Institutes of Health terminated the award in April 2020 following allegations that COVID-19 emerged from the lab. The NIAID is part of the NIH.
The second co-conspirator was described in charging documents as a physician, scientist and professor who worked for an academic institute that received federal grants.