COVID-19

Ex-Fauci Adviser Pleads Guilty to Plotting to Conceal COVID Records

Is this long-overdue accountability or political retaliation against a researcher?

Published 2 days ago

Ex-Fauci Adviser Pleads Guilty to Plotting to Conceal COVID Records

Story

Above: David Morens on Capitol Hill on May 22, 2024. Image credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Spin

Republican narrative

A senior NIH official pleading guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States is not a witch hunt — it's accountability. Morens and his co-conspirators deliberately evaded FOIA and the Federal Records Act to hide communications tied to COVID-19 research grants, including funding routed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No one is above the law, and a guilty plea makes the political-persecution defense impossible to sustain.

FBI Director Kash Patel on X

Nick Sortor on X

Rand Paul on X

Democratic narrative

Charging a 78-year-old scientist with felonies for moving conversations to Gmail is political retaliation being sold as justice. No records were destroyed; the so-called conspiracy amounts to colleagues venting frustration and the underlying grant was terminated under political pressure from Donald Trump — not legitimate scientific review. Prosecuting researchers over a scientific disagreement makes the country more vulnerable to the next pandemic.

Angie Rasmussen on Bluesky Social Chemistry World