Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci at the National Institutes of Health, has been indicted on charges of skirting federal record-keeping laws and concealing emails related to the origins of the coronavirus outbreak in China.
The indictment, unsealed on Monday by the district court in Maryland, accuses Dr. Morens of working in concert with scientists outside the federal government to protect their funding for virus research. In return, the indictment says, one of those scientists supplied Dr.
Morens with “illegal gratuities,” including two bottles of wine and a promise of a future meal at a “Michelin starred” restaurant. The allegations against Dr. Morens follow a yearslong effort by Republican lawmakers to link Dr. Morens, Dr.
Fauci and the country’s premier medical research agency to the beginnings of the coronavirus pandemic. Soon after President Trump returned to office last year, his administration accused Dr.
Morens of deleting federal records on a website it had created to argue that “the true origins of Covid-19” had been a lab leak. That investigation of Dr.
Morens has so far yielded no evidence that scientists or health officials were involved in research that started or spread the coronavirus outbreak. The private emails of Dr. Morens cited in the indictment also do not show him trying to conceal evidence of a lab leak.
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