David Morens, senior advisor to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci for 16 years, spent much of his career studying the threat of viral outbreaks posed by birds, especially when infections jump from wild fowl to poultry. Now he's facing the possibility of prison.

The chickens have come home to roost for Morens, two years after congressional subpoenas exposed his avowed practice of circumventing the Freedom of Information Act to hide conversations about the origin of COVID-19 and suggesting he did so in cooperation with Fauci, whom Morens called "too smart" to get caught.

An April 16 federal indictment, unsealed Tuesday after Morens' arrest, alleges conspiracies with two others, an agreement to illegally hide their conversations and a quid pro quo rewarding Morens with a "cult favorite" Napa Valley wine for promoting the natural origin theory of COVID and discrediting the lab-leak theory.

Morens surrendered his passport Tuesday and is scheduled for arraignment May 8 in federal district court in Greenbelt, Md., the court docket shows. His conditions for release prevent Morens from leaving the continental U.S. without prior approval by the court and from communicating with "Co-Conspirator 1" and "Co-Conspirator 2."

Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chair Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is following up the disclosure of an alleged coverup of COVID origins with what he calls a Food and Drug Administration coverup of lethal COVID vaccine injuries.

"The FDA knew" COVID vaccines were "showing safety signals for mass death," Johnson told the Just the News, No Noise television show Tuesday night, saying his hearing Wednesday will reveal FDA staff making similar statements about withholding "sensitive information" from emails that could encourage vaccine hesitancy.

"We've gotten documents" showing the authors of the "analytical algorithm" in the government's passive Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System warned then-Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Peter Marks in March 2021 that it would "mask" adverse events, and offered Marks an "updated version that will unmask" safety signals.

The updated version found "49 cases of extreme masking, 25 safety signals, including sudden cardiac death, pulmonary infarction, Bell's palsy, 25 of these types," Johnson said. 

"And the FDA ignored it, and they continue to say, well, we're not seeing any safety signals," he said. "This should be a major scandal."

NIH terminated Wuhan grant as another EcoHealth grant application was pending

The indictment's detailed descriptions of two co-conspirators and "Company #1" make clear they refer to Peter Daszak and his shuttered EcoHealth Alliance, which rose from the ashes as Nature.Health.Global a year ago, and Gerald Keusch, former associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory Institute at Boston University.

The referenced communications match those ascribed to Daszak, EcoHealth and Keusch in the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic's staff memorandum in May 2024, which first exposed Morens' admission that he evades FOIA by using a personal Gmail account and hand-delivers sensitive documents to "Tony" or uses "his private gmail."

Neither Daszak, whom Morens called his "best friend," nor Keusch has been indicted. Morens has no listed lawyer in the court docket as of Tuesday evening, and Nature.Health.Global did not answer requests for a response from Daszak and Morens, its president and affiliated scientist respectively. 

Fauci was accused of lying under oath shortly after the Morens revelations, first telling the subcommittee he had "never conducted official business via my personal email" and then switching to the present tense: "I do not do government business on my private email."

A FOIA production to the White Coat Waste Project, a vocal critic of Fauci's record on animal testing, revealed Fauci telling a Washington Post reporter he would send her materials on "my gmail account" in fall 2021, when he was under congressional scrutiny for "cruel" taxpayer-funded experiments on puppies as alleged by WCW.

Just the News could not reach Fauci through his known contacts: Georgetown University, where he's been a distinguished professor for nearly three years, and lawyer David Schertler, who represented Fauci before the subcommittee.

NIAID used EcoHealth as a pass-through to fund the Wuhan Institute of Virology's gain-of-function research, which "modifies a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent," as then-National Institutes of Health Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak confirmed to the subcommittee two years ago.

But NIH terminated EcoHealth's grant to fund WIV research in April 2020 while it investigated the Chinese lab as a potential source of COVID, as EcoHealth was awaiting word of whether it had received a $7 million NIH grant to fund an "Emerging Infectious Disease Regional Center."

Promote natural origin for an 'upper-mid tier' cabernet

The most eye-opening allegations that don't appear in the subcommittee's work concern exactly how Morens used his credentials to help Daszak fight off the lab-leak theory and promote natural spillover, and how Daszak thanked him.

The "same day" he received it, Co-Conspirator 1 — believed to be Daszak -/ forwarded NIH's termination letter to Co-Conspirator 2 —believed to be Keusch — who urged Daszak to wait to challenge it until "the EIDRC funding comes through."

Morens emailed Co-Conspirator 1 — Daszak — from his NIH account around June 11, 2020, saying, "let’s win this anti science battle, get you refunded and fiber funded, then settle scores and kick some ass," the indictment says.

Daszak shipped two bottles of The Prisoner, which Liquor Barn sells for $60 and calls an "upper-mid tier" cabernet "sitting above everyday supermarket reds but below single-vineyard, estate-bottled Napa cult wines," from Bounty Hunter Rare Wine & Spirits to Morens' home in Maryland around June 25, 2020, the indictment alleges.

"This is the first of what I hope will be a continued series of expressions of gratitude for your advice, support, and behind- the-scenes [sic] shenanigans in my battle against your bosses [sic] boss, his boss, and the ultimate boss on the hill," Daszak allegedly wrote, and "hope I will be able to return the favor one day."

Morens emailed Daszak to thank him for the wine, the indictment says. "Now i am actually going to have to do something to deserve it," Morens wrote, suggesting he write a "scientific commentary that outlines the importance of what [CO-CONSPIRATOR 1] and others have been doing, but without mentioning [CO-CONSPIRATOR 1] or the grant termination[.]”

The next day Daszak emailed Morens at his Gmail account "promising additional things of value," as the indictment paraphrases. "Consider this my phase II gift. Phase 111 might actually involve a meal - the Michelin starred restaurants are opening in Paris - DC and New York will do eventually!" Daszak wrote.

(The indictment phrases this as if Morens had already written the commentary before receiving the wine, but the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland specifies Morens offered to write it as a thank-you for the wine.)

Morens submitted the commentary July 3 to a "prominent medical journal," arguing for COVID's natural spillover against lab-leak, to benefit Daszak and EcoHealth, the indictment says. It was labeled as "funded in part by the intramural research program" of NIAID.

The description matches a group commentary, "The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters," whose authors include Morens, Keusch and current acting NIAID director Jeffery Taubernberger. It was published in September 2020 in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

"A quantum leap in bat coronavirus surveillance and research is urgently needed," they wrote. "This work must emphasize virologic and behavioral field studies of humans and animals wherever they interface, and especially in disease hotspots, as well as virologic studies related to human and animal spillover risks and the means of reducing them."

After learning around Aug. 27, 2020 that EcoHealth got the $7.5 million EIRDC grant from NIH, which Keusch had warned Daszak not to blow by challenging the terminated WIV grant, Morens emailed Daszak from his NIH account: “Ahem.... do I get a kickback???? Too much fooking money! DO you deserve it all? Let’s discuss....”

Daszak responded "of course there’s a kick-back [sic]. It starts with 5 more years of FoIA [sic] requests [...] I just hope it doesn’t culminate in 5 years in Federal jail [...]," the indictment says.

Senate staff pulled 'needle out of a haystack' to nab Morens

Critics of Morens and Fauci crowed at the indictment, led by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., who credited the subcommittee with exposing Morens attributing his FOIA-evasion skills to "FOIA lady" Margaret Moore in NIH's FOIA office, who was also subpoenaed. (Morens said under oath he was joking about Moore.)

"No one is above the law and under the Trump Administration, overdue accountability is finally here," Comer said.

Sen. Johnson credited his investigations staff with pulling a "needle out of a haystack," among 115,000 pages of documents his subcommittee obtained from a public university, to find the "FOIA lady" quote from Morens.

"So the wheels of justice turn slowly, but hopefully they will turn certainly, and this individual, at least, will be held accountable," Johnson told Just the News, No Noise.

"White Coat Waste was the first to uncover, document, and expose NIH's reckless funding for gain-of-function in Wuhan and beagle testing worldwide—two of the NIH’s biggest scandals," the organization said Tuesday. "But Morens wasn’t a lone wolf, and other lab leak cover-up lackeys are still in government raking in taxpayer-funded salaries."