BONUS POST: Fauci's Former Senior Aide Pleads Guilty to COVID Cover-Up

(His original defense was that he was [*checks notes*]... just joking.)

Yesterday, David Morens—a former senior NIAID official and longtime Fauci advisor—pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S., which is the legal system’s polite way of saying, “actually, I did the thing and I did it on purpose.”

Quick recap: Morens spent the pandemic playing a very specific game of hide-the-records, routing Covid-origins emails around FOIA, deleting anything spicy, and workshopping creative, non-trackable ways to get sensitive information to Fauci. Fortunately for investigators, his own records did most of the incriminating.

“I can either send stuff to Tony on his private Gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens wrote. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”

Smooth, Dave. Really. Nothing says we’re definitely not hiding anything like memorializing your document-concealment strategy in writing.

But here’s the fun part: a guilty plea isn’t the end of the story. Morens just went from fall guy to potential star witness. The question now is what he’s willing to spill. And as he’s staring down his 78th birthday and the possibility of five years in federal prison, the man suddenly has an extremely compelling incentive to remember things.

Things like who else knew? Who else participated? What was “the stuff that could cause trouble?” Not “stuff that he didn’t want made public.” Not “stuff that might be embarrassing.” Stuff that was so inherently explosive that it needed to be personally delivered to Fauci’s home. What was that stuff?

One does indeed hope that!

There won’t be a trial; by pleading guilty, Morens skipped over that part of the process. Next comes sentencing, where the U.S. Probation Office prepares a report, prosecutors and Morens’ lawyers submit competing recommendations, and on November 12, a judge decides how much of his remaining time Uncle Sam gets to supervise.

What we don’t know yet—because his plea agreement explicitly references a separate sealed supplement that has not been and will not be released to the public—is whether Morens is singing, what he’s singing about, or whose names appear in the refrain.

But we do know something we didn’t know yesterday: the alleged cover-up is now an admitted conspiracy, which means America’s Beloved Doctor may once again be hauled in for questioning. And with a Senate committee already voting to hold him in contempt, repeatedly pleading the Fifth may not be the best strategy this time around.

I’ll keep you posted…

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NOTE: The rest of this post originally ran behind the paywall shortly after Morens was indicted. It outlines his role at NIAID and his alleged crimes—most of which are no longer alleged. Given yesterday’s yuge news (and the fact that I’m speaking at an event this afternoon and don’t have time to do the full Jenna’s Side deep dive on the latest development), I figured it was worth resurrecting for anyone who may have missed the backstory and isn’t sure what Morens just admitted to.

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During the pandemic, every sunrise seemed to arrive with a new term to learn: Asynchronous learning. Comorbidities. Contact tracing. Cytokine storm. Zoonotic spillover. Zoom fatigue. FOIA request. That last one felt almost too good to be true: apparently you could just fill out an official-looking form and the government was legally obligated to comb through the entirety of its records—emails, memos, internal communications, the behind-the-scenes stuff we weren’t necessarily meant to see—black out any spicy bits, and then hand it all over. So convenient. So transparent.

For a minute, it felt like we’d discovered the cheat code. “Oh, you don’t want to answer the question? No problem. We’ll just FOIA it.”

It turns out, the weasels we were hoping to catch with those handy FOIA nets had already found a remarkably effective loophole.

The workaround did not require high-level computational skills. It did not involve web wizardry or mission-impossible theatrics. It did not rely on burner phones or secret servers (although, historically, those would also appear to be an option). To dodge a Freedom of Information Act request, all one had to do was master a simple three-part move made famous at the Hillary Clinton School of Email Management™:

1. Don’t use your official government account.

2. Delete anything even remotely incriminating—and encourage others to do the same.

3. Deny any wrongdoing.

That’s it. That’s the whole strategy. No encryption. No spycraft. Just extra-aggressive inbox hygiene with a side of the-dog-ate-my-homework energy.

This week, Dr. David Morens, former senior advisor to none other than Anthony Fauci, was formally indicted for allegedly concealing records, deleting communications, and sidestepping FOIA like it was a pile of poodle poop on the sidewalk and not, you know, federal law.

According to reports, nearly 78-year-old Morens has been charged with one count of conspiracy against the United States; two counts of destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; and two counts of concealment, removal, or mutilation of records—all related to gain-of-function research and the origins of Covid-19 (one of the two questions hanging over this decade, right behind when anyone tied to the Epstein files will ever see the inside of a prison cell).

Not only was Morens allegedly conducting government business over his personal email account—a no-no up there with auctioning off private White House tours and Photoshopping executive orders—he also was reportedly swapping cozy notes about deleting smoking guns with Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance. In case you’ve forgotten, EcoHealth is the NIH-funded nonprofit that funneled taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan lab for bat coronavirus research, making Daszak the guy at the epicenter of the whole “where did this thing come from, anyway?” debate.

“[I will] always communicate on Gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly. Just send to any of my addresses and I will delete anything I don’t want to see in The New York Times,” one email from Morens to Daszak read.

“There is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private Gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble,” said another.

My favorite, though? “I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe.”

The craziest part isn’t even that the federal government has a “FOIA lady” on staff to assist with the destruction of state evidence; it’s that none of this is new information. Morens’ emails were revealed in a House Oversight Committee hearing in 2024… and we’re just now getting around to the indictment. Efficient. Meanwhile, nothing builds public confidence quite like senior officials casually discussing how to make federal records “disappear” while the rest of us are out here treating FOIA like it’s the holy grail of transparency.

The American public: “Just wait for the documents.”
The documents: “LingOL.”

According to the indictment, this wasn’t just sloppy email etiquette. At one point, after learning EcoHealth had secured a $7.5 million grant, Morens reportedly asked Daszak—obviously it was a joke!—about getting a “kickback,” which I suppose you’d only put in writing if you thought you could permanently memory-hole the email immediately after hitting send. Prosecutors also allege that Daszak provided Morens with gifts, including bottles of wine and Michelin-star meals, as “expressions of gratitude for your advice, support, and behind-the-scenes shenanigans in my battle against your boss’s boss, his boss, and the ultimate boss on the hill.” Basic professional niceties. Nothing sketchy about that at all.

The indictment includes two unnamed co-conspirators who “concealed, removed, destroyed, and caused the concealment and removal of federal records to evade FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] and FRA [Federal Records Act].” Unfortunately, the two mystery accomplices do not appear to include Fauci, even though last year, emails surfaced that showed America’s Doctor himself instructing colleagues to delete emails… more than once.

Read the emails here.

Which is—how do I put this delicately—a pitifully bad look for someone who later testifies under oath that they absolutely did not do any such thing. “Delete this after you read it” is not a gray-area phrase. It’s not open to interpretation. It’s not something that can be “taken out of context.” It’s a command. A very specific one.

Fauci also insisted—in sworn testimony before Congress—that despite years of well-documented collaboration, he “knew nothing of Dr. Morens’ actions regarding Dr. Daszak, EcoHealth, or his emails,” which is weird, on account of fairly irrefutable proof to the contrary.

The official word for lying under oath is perjury, a federal felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. Thanks to Obiden, of course, Fauci is immune. You’ll recall that mere minutes before turning the Oval Office keys back over to Trump last January, Sleepy Joe issued a preemptive pardon to Dr. Death Fauci, claiming the move was an effort to shield the dedicated public servant from what he called “unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions” by the incoming Trump administration.

Unjustified. Mkay.

Fauci could have refused the pardon—but he didn’t. Because nothing says “I am the picture of moral purity” like accepting an irrevocable get-out-of-jail-free card on archival White House letterhead.

Netizens are speculating that Morens is being made the fall guy for Fauci, Collins, Baric, Daszak, and the rest of the GOF narrative pushers. After all, Morens is the one person in this whole saga who, at least for now, is actually being asked to answer for something. [UPDATE: He answered. Guilty.] If convicted, he faces decades in prison [UPDATE: The conspiracy charge he pleaded guilty to carries a maximum of five years], which at 78 years old, pretty much guarantees he won’t be enjoying any more USAID-funded foie gras or Gewürztraminer in this lifetime.

“These allegations represent a profound abuse of trust at a time when the American people needed it most—during the height of a global pandemic,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

“Circumventing records protocols with the intention of avoiding transparency is something that will not be tolerated by this FBI,” added FBI Director Kash Patel. “If you have engaged in activity conspiring against the United States, we will not stop until you face justice.”

Unless, you know, you were already preemptively pardoned by a prior administration. SMH.

Obviously I need to know what you think!