A former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal conspiracy charge stemming from efforts to conceal government communications about coronavirus research grants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
David M. Morens, 78, of Chester, Maryland, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.
Morens served as a senior adviser in NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 through 2022.
According to his guilty plea, Morens and other individuals conspired to evade requirements under the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Records Act while communicating about a National Institutes of Health grant involving bat coronavirus research.
The NIH had terminated a grant titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence amid controversy over research connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. NIAID had awarded the grant to an organization identified in court documents as “Company 1,” which then provided a subaward to the Wuhan institute.
Federal prosecutors said that after the grant was terminated, Morens and others worked to help restore funding while also seeking to counter claims that COVID-19 originated through a laboratory leak.
Anticipating that their communications could become subject to public-records requests, Morens and his co-conspirators agreed to use his personal Gmail account rather than his official NIH email account, according to the plea.
Prosecutors said the private account was used to exchange nonpublic NIH information, discuss efforts to influence NIH funding decisions, edit letters intended for NIH leadership and transmit information through unofficial channels to another senior NIAID official.
Court documents state that those communications involved matters within Morens’ official duties and therefore constituted federal records required to be created, maintained and exchanged through government systems.
Morens also admitted participating in a conspiracy involving illegal gratuities, according to prosecutors.
One co-conspirator gave Morens wine in recognition of what was described in court documents as his “behind-the-scenes shenanigans.” Prosecutors said Morens subsequently identified an official action he could take to justify receiving the gift: writing a scientific commentary for a prominent medical journal advocating the position that COVID-19 had natural origins.
The co-conspirator also discussed providing Morens with additional benefits, including meals at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, New York and Washington, D.C., according to the Justice Department.
The guilty plea does not itself establish whether COVID-19 originated naturally or through a laboratory incident. The criminal case concerns Morens’ handling and concealment of federal records, efforts surrounding government grant funding and the gratuity arrangement described in his plea.
Morens faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. The Justice Department noted that actual sentences are determined by a federal judge after consideration of sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.
The investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph R. Baldwin and Bijon A. Mostoufi are prosecuting the case.
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