Years of emphatic denials that U.S. taxpayers never funded gain-of-function work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have met their match in a federal courtroom. On August 18, 2026, David Morens—long-time senior adviser to Anthony Fauci—pleaded guilty to conspiring to hide the very paper trail those denials tried to bury.
Henry Kamens
Fine wines and Michelin dinners were the thank-you notes, or payoffs, for his efforts. Morens now faces up to five years in prison for conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States.
Gain of Function or NOT?
The research once dismissed as “not gain-of-function” under the narrowest possible definition now sits at the centre of a criminal admission of deliberate concealment. The cover-up is no longer a theory. It is a guilty plea. And the questions that once got you labelled a conspiracy theorist are now the ones the record itself refuses to let die.
That is not a conspiracy theory anymore but a documented criminal guilty plea, and one that is receiving little coverage in the mainstream media, as it opens a can of worms regarding what more will be exposed before the truth is fully revealed
David Morens, a former senior adviser to Anthony Fauci, pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal federal records concerning COVID-19 research.
David Morens admitted in federal court in the US state of Maryland that he and allies funnelled sensitive emails—about the cancelled EcoHealth bat-coronavirus grant tied to Wuhan and efforts to restore it,
Moreover, the 2024 House Select Subcommittee report found serious, systemic weaknesses in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID) and National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) grant procedures and examined how these failures enabled EcoHealth President Dr. Peter Daszak to fund dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, without sufficient oversight.
- EcoHealth violated its grant conditions by failing to report a potentially dangerous WIV experiment;
- used U.S. taxpayer money to facilitate coronavirus research at WIV that the committee characterized as gain-of-function;
- failed to provide NIH with research that U.S. taxpayers had funded.
It is now established that EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Daszak, who happens to have Ukrainian roots, and who maintained close ties with bio research projects in Ukraine, had facilitated gain-of function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, He willingly violated multiple requirements of EcoHealth’s multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant.
Those are primary-source congressional findings, not Russian media allegations or the conspiracy claims of some eccentric American living in Georgia who has repeatedly appeared in Russian state media and pro-Kremlin Georgian outlets making claims about the U.S.-funded Richard G. Lugar Centre for Public Health Research (commonly called the Lugar Lab) in Tbilisi for its role in alleged bioweapons and gain-of-function research, including serious allegations about EcoHealth Alliance dating back to at least 2021.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jeffrey Silverman and various associated media outlets claimed that the lab (connected to EcoHealth Alliance, or bat/coronavirus research) was somehow involved in the virus’s origin and/or subsequent release of EDPs, an acronym for Especially Dangerous Pathogens (such as Bacillus anthracis [anthrax], Yersinia pestis [plague], or Brucella species).
Other Perspectives
Dr. John Campbell, a public health specialist who recently did a program on how the COVID-19 conspiracy had been confirmed in court, puts it appropriately, ‘so there you are, perfectly straightforward.’
He recalls in a recent YouTube video, Senator Rand Paul asking Dr. Antony Fauci, “Did that include gain-of-function research?” and how Dr. Fauci was emphatic in his denials, and regardless, since he has pleaded the 5th on everything?
Senator Rand Paul repeatedly pressed Anthony Fauci in Senate hearings (most notably on May 11, 2021, and a follow-up on July 20, 2021) on whether NIH/NIAID funding of EcoHealth Alliance work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology included gain-of-function (GoF) research. Fauci’s responses were emphatic denials.
Key exchanges and quotes
On May 11, 2021, Fauci stated:
“The NIH has not ever, and does not now, fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
In the July 20, 2021 hearing, Paul returned to the issue, citing a paper on bat SARS-related coronaviruses that credited NIH funding and involved combining spike genes to create novel viruses capable of infecting human cells. Paul asked if Fauci wished to retract the earlier statement, noting it is a crime to lie to Congress.
Fauci replied:
“I have never lied before the CCongress,and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you are referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function.”
When Paul pressed that the work increased transmissibility of animal viruses to humans and matched the NIH’s own definition,
Fauci said: “Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly… You do not know what you are talking about.”
He later added: “If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you.”
Critics, including Paul and some scientists, argued it met broader scientific definitions of enhancing pathogen functions. Later, NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak acknowledged in 2024 testimony that under a generic definition the work could be considered GoF. The definitional dispute over what constitutes “gain-of-function” remains unresolved in the public record and continues to fuel the broader debate.
Furthermore, the Congressional report went considerably further on COVID-19 origins, concluding that SARS-CoV-2 likely emerged through a laboratory or research-related accident.
Without question, we now know that the personal Gmail account of David Morens was used to dodge FOIA and federal records laws. But what more are they hiding is the question that should be on everybody’s lips.
It is clear that Morens, a former employee at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, conspired to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Out of appreciation for his conspiracy, a bribe. Or, feeling sorry for the guy, David received fine wines and paid for dinner at posh establishments for his efforts to hide the truth.
Smoking Gun
The guilty plea is a smoking gun that shows criminal admission of deliberate concealment by a senior public health official, not mere speculation or Russian disinformation.
This adds another level of support to earlier ODNI releases. In June 2026, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence document dumps in June added fuel to the fire, whereby released materials demonstrate how Fauci steered intelligence away from lab-origin scrutiny. The guilty plea does not itself prove SARS-CoV-2 was engineered or deliberately released; however, it proves high-level efforts to keep related communications out of public view.
Mainstream coverage has been muted relative to the implications. However, according to the Associated Press, Morens admitted using private email to circumvent public records requirements and conceal or destroy communications concerning COVID-19 research grants, including efforts to revive a controversial coronavirus grant.
That is not a conspiracy theory anymore but a documented criminal guilty plea, and one that is receiving little coverage in the mainstream media, as it opens a can of worms regarding what more will be exposed before the truth is fully revealed.
Snowball Effect
The June 2026 Office of the Director of National Intelligence release of a large collection of previously classified/declassified material concerning COVID-19 origins with those materials being evidence that Fauci influenced intelligence assessments and that a laboratory origin was suppressed.
There was deliberate concealment of government records concerning COVID-19 and gain-of-function-related research. All the while, the Western fact-checking ecosystem will more often than not substitute attribution of any such claims to yet more “Russian disinformation” claims.
When will it stop, and when will the full truth come out, if ever?
This is the million, or should that be multi-billion, dollar question. The ties between Big Pharma and the NIH and US politicians at both state and federal levels mean that the whole house of cards might be affected by further revelations.
Henry Kamens, columnist and expert on Central Asia and the Caucasus
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