First domino to fall? Fauci's 'consigliere' pleads GUILTY to role in COVID cover-up



David Morens, a longtime acolyte of Anthony Fauci, has pleaded guilty to his role in the attempted cover-up of federal records pertaining to the origin of the COVID-19 virus and to a clandestine initiative to restore U.S. funding to the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology via disgraced British zoologist Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance, according to the Department of Justice.

"This is potentially the watershed moment in seeking long overdue and morally required accountability for perhaps the biggest travesty ever foisted upon the American people," stated BlazeTV host Steve Deace.

'The race now is on for Fauci's felons to rat each other out.'

Morens served as senior adviser to Fauci in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Office of the Director from 2006 through 2022. In April, he was indicted and charged with conspiracy, destruction of records in federal investigation, and concealment of records.

Under the deal he ultimately struck with federal prosecutors, Morens pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States. He now faces up to five years in prison.

"Morens obstructed the Oversight Project's investigation and pled guilty to it today," Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News. "I hope this serves as a lesson to other bureaucrats that it is our government and we pay them to work there and for us. It's our information, and they should never hide it from us."

Morens' attorney, Tim Belevetz, said in a statement to Blaze News, "By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did, and he will continue to do so."

RELATED: Fauci was apparently warned to save '

David Morens. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

While speculation abounds, it remains unclear whether Morens has agreed to testify against the unnamed co-conspirators in his case.

FBI Director Kash Patel noted, however, that "this FBI investigation remains ongoing."

Over concerns that COVID had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where dangerous gain-of-function experiments were conducted on coronaviruses, the National Institutes of Health terminated in 2020 a grant to EcoHealth Alliance titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," which EcoHealth Alliance had subawarded to the WIV.

'There will be no "there" there.'

The Justice Department noted on the basis of Morens' guilty plea that after the grant was terminated, Morens and "Co-Conspirator 2" helped "Co-Conspirator 1" restore the grant "and counter the narrative that COVID-19 leaked from a lab."

Context appears to indicate that "Co-Conspirator 1" in this case is Daszak.

For starters, the DOJ noted that the NIH terminated "Co-Conspirator 1's" grant and named the grant, which documents show was received by Daszak's now-defunct company, EcoHealth Alliance. The DOJ noted further that Co-Conspirator 1 made the subaward to the WIV, which his company had done. Furthermore, Daszak's name repeatedly comes up in the Morens emails previously released by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which show them discussing ways to hide their communications from public view.

Politico identified "Co-Conspirator 2" as Gerald Keusch, a former director of NIH's Fogarty International Center who now works with the NIAD lab at Boston University.

Neither Daszak nor Keusch has been charged with a crime in this case, and neither responded to Blaze News' request for comment.

"In anticipation that their communications would be requested through FOIA Requests, Morens, Co-Conspirator 1, and Co-Conspirator 2 agreed in writing to intentionally hide their communications from public view by corresponding using Morens’s personal Gmail account, rather than his official NIH email account," said the DOJ.

Emails previously published by the subcommittee highlight the intentional nature of Morens' evasiveness.

In an April 21, 2021, email to Daszak, Morens wrote, for instance: "I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony [Fauci] 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."

In a May 13, 2021, email to Keusch with Daszak CC-ed, Morens referred to "our 'secret' back channel."

In another email to Keusch dated Nov. 19, 2021, Morens wrote, "BOTH my gmail and phone calls are now safe. Text is NOT, as it can be FOIA'd, as can my govt email. So you and Peter and others should be able to email me on gmail only."

Morens allegedly even sought the help of the NIH FOIA office for instruction on how to delete federal records.

"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," he wrote in a Feb. 24, 2021, email. "Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail."

RELATED: Days after Biden inauguration, FBI shielded Wuhan lab collaborator from investigation after China trip

Disgraced zoologist Peter Daszak. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Justice Department noted that "the co-conspirators used Morens’s personal Gmail account to exchange non-public NIH information; correspond about their efforts to influence NIH to fund Company 1; exchange edits to drafts of letters addressed to NIH leadership for Company 1 and Co-Conspirator 1; and 'back-channel' information to Senior NIAID Official 1."

In addition to admitting to his efforts to keep Americans in the dark about federal employees' damning discussions, Morens admitted to conspiring with "Co-Conspirator 1" to pay illegal gratuities.

"Co-Conspirator 1" is alleged to have said that he would treat Morens to meals at Michelin-starred restaurants around the world and gifted him wine for his "behind-the-scenes shenanigans" and even arranged for its delivery.

'Fauci and Morens were on a radical mission to remake America.'

Morens' guilty plea has inspired hope that Fauci might soon similarly be visited by consequence.

"Despite Anthony Fauci’s attempts to distance himself, David Morens was Fauci’s trusted consigliere and fixer for some 30 years," Matt Kibbe, the host of BlazeTV's docuseries "The Coverup," told Blaze News. "They had coauthored over 40 articles together, including this Orwellian nugget from November 2020 in the academic journal Cell: 'Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence.'"

"Fauci and Morens were on a radical mission to remake America, mad scientists who viewed the rest of us all as caged beagles in their laboratory," continued Kibbe. "But then they got caught, and Morens’ guilty plea gives me new hope that justice will find Fauci as well. Much more receipts on Morens and Fauci in my series 'The Coverup,' particularly Episode 2 featuring Rand Paul."

Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University told Blaze News, "Morens' guilty plea is an important first step in holding accountable the malfeasant U.S. officials who funded the reckless gain-of-function research in Wuhan that caused COVID and who then defrauded the global public about the origin of COVID."

"It seems possible, even likely, that Morens was 'flipped' and that Morens' guilty plea is the product of a plea bargain in which Morens has agreed to testify against Fauci, Daszak, Keusch, and others," continued Ebright.

Justin Goodman, the senior vice president of the White Coat Waste Project, told Blaze News that Morens' guilty plea, Fauci's recent contempt vote, and other recent steps toward accountability "are signs that knives are finally out for the conniving animal experimenters who caused and covered up a likely lab leak in Wuhan. Hopefully more heads will roll."

Fauci's legal representative and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland did not respond to Blaze News' requests for comment.

"The COVID cartel has one less member," wrote Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (R). "Accountability has begun, and much more needs to follow."

Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.

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Fauci’s Right-Hand Man Pleads Guilty To ‘Scheme’ Evading Open Records Requests

Dr. David Morens pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge 'to commit offenses and to defraud the United States.'

The Biden autopen scandal has one big winner: Anthony Fauci



Anthony Fauci is probably going to skate. He should not. But nearly every institutional and political incentive now points toward that outcome.

Americans who watched Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times before the Senate are understandably furious. They may also be headed for an epic letdown when the man they most want held accountable resumes his life in pompous peace.

Public frustration will rise when people realize that Fauci may leave Congress untouched after pleading the Fifth more than 100 times.

The first obstacle is the legal uncertainty surrounding Fauci’s autopenned pardon.

The pardon was signed by autopen, and substantial evidence raises questions about whether President Biden personally authorized it. A presidential pardon is an authority only the president may exercise.

In Fauci’s case, the written record includes an email from Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients on the final evening of the administration. Zients emailed: “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.”

Biden later told the New York Times in an interview that he had approved broad categories of pardons rather than, in every instance, specific names.

That admission came from the same newspaper that had initially dismissed the Oversight Project’s autopen disclosures in an article headlined “How an Autopen Conspiracy Theory About Biden Went Viral.” Within months, the Times had moved from ridicule to damage control.

The basic facts are therefore established: Fauci’s pardon was executed by autopen, and serious questions remain about Biden’s awareness and authorization.

President Trump has called the autopen controversy the scandal of the century and declared the affected actions “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.” The Department of Justice, however, has behaved as though that declaration carries no legal consequence.

That gap between political assertion and prosecutorial action is decisive. Questioning a pardon’s validity in public is one thing. Charging someone whose defense rests on that pardon is another. So far, the Justice Department has shown no appetite for testing the issue in court.

Fauci’s Senate testimony exposed the contradiction at the center of his position. He repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, arguing that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was trying to lure him into statements that could support a perjury referral.

RELATED: The Biden tapes blow open the autopen scandal

Celal Gunes/Anadolu/Getty Images

In his opening statement, Fauci said: “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”

A witness may invoke the Fifth Amendment when he genuinely believes his answers could expose him to criminal liability. The privilege is not a general escape hatch from politically uncomfortable questioning.

Fauci’s plausible claim of criminal exposure rests, at least in part, on the uncertainty surrounding his pardon. But relying on that uncertainty means conceding that the pardon may not be beyond challenge.

If Fauci insists the pardon is unquestionably valid and no prosecution is possible, he weakens the basis for invoking the Fifth. If he claims a real risk of prosecution, he implicitly acknowledges that the pardon may not protect him.

The same cloud that threatens the pardon also strengthens his Fifth Amendment claim.

That sounds like vulnerability. In practice, it may protect him.

There is still no sign that the Justice Department plans to prosecute Fauci or anyone else in a case designed to test an autopen action. The department has not challenged a single autopenned pardon or commutation.

Worse, the Trump administration continues releasing offenders whose sentences Biden shortened by autopen. The executive branch is carrying out the very orders the president has publicly described as nullities.

For the Oversight Project, that contradiction is more than theoretical. It’s incredibly frustrating. Putting violent felons back on the street is difficult to reconcile with the claim that autopenned acts are void.

Could Congress hold Fauci in contempt for invoking the Fifth rather than answering questions? Possibly. Probably not.

Fauci would likely show enough basis to argue that Paul sought a criminal referral and that the uncertainty surrounding his pardon created a genuine risk of prosecution.

Any challenge would probably be litigated in federal court in Washington, D.C., a venue far friendlier to Fauci than many others. That venue alone improves his odds.

The political barriers are even greater. There are almost certainly not enough votes in the Senate to pursue contempt, both because of uncertainty over whether Fauci’s conduct crossed the legal line and because senators fear accusations of political weaponization.

Getting 60 votes to overcome a filibuster is a fantasy. Even clearing Paul’s committee, divided 8-7, may prove difficult. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) has already expressed some sympathy for Fauci’s position.

Paul has suggested another path: If the committee approves contempt on Thursday, he could refer the matter directly to the Justice Department or pursue a civil action.

RELATED: Two Americas, under Fauci, with liberty and justice for none

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Fauci would immediately argue that a committee cannot exercise the contempt power of the full Senate. He would contend that without a vote of the whole chamber, there is no valid contempt finding to enforce.

The courts are likely to agree. Which leaves the public exactly where it began.

Congress has little chance of imposing consequences. The only meaningful route runs through the Justice Department: charge Fauci, force litigation over the pardon, and finally test whether Biden lawfully authorized it.

That would require the department to abandon the passivity it has displayed so far.

Public frustration will rise when people realize that Fauci may leave Congress untouched after pleading the Fifth more than 100 times.

The useful response is not another round of televised outrage. It is sustained pressure on the Justice Department to treat autopenned actions the way Trump himself described them: null and void.

Leaked Fauci diary reignites COVID outrage: ‘Everything he’s done to a beagle should be done to him’



For years, critics of Anthony Fauci argued that the nation’s top public health official knew more about COVID-19’s origins than he was willing to admit — and now the release of his diary proves they were right.

And Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been all over it.

“Senator Rand Paul has also been very into this. In fact, he took a beating multiple times in hearings where, you know, look, he was just quite clearly right when he was describing things like gain-of-function research,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere comments.

And both Stu and co-host Dave Landau support Paul in his fight to bring down the man who led Americans astray, as they believe what he did to the country was unforgivable.

“Fauci made it so kids couldn’t socialize for two years, which means he figured out a whole new way to cause autism without even using a vaccine, and then he was forcing vaccines,” Dave says.


“If you were in the Northeast, I mean, your kids didn’t go to school for up to a year and a half,” Stu agrees.

Dave admits that he has “hate for this guy for what he did to this country” that can’t be faked.

“Like, I f**king hate this guy. I’m sorry, I really do. I really think everything he’s done to a beagle should be done to him and on public TV,” he says, referencing the fatal experiments Fauci carried out on Beagles.

“I hate him,” he adds.

And Paul clearly does too.

In a thread on X, he wrote: “My investigation uncovered that Anthony Fauci kept a diary. What he wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”

On January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote: “Now we know that the market was not the source. It was the amplifier.”

“He believes the wet market is not the source of this and then goes on for as long as I can remember saying up until now that there was natural origin and that’s where it came from,” Stu explains.

“I believe it was called the Wuhan COVID-19 lab,” Dave adds.

“They’re like, ‘No, somebody ate a bat sandwich four doors down.’ And you’re like, ‘Right, but where was it near?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, it’s certainly not near the Fauci-made-this-disease lab,’” he continues.

In another diary entry from February 1, 2020, Fauci admitted that only 2 out of 12 scientists on a call believed the virus was natural.

“The rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible,” he wrote.

“The lab leak theory. That’s what it is,” Stu says.

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Former White House Covid czar Anthony Fauci pleaded the Fifth Amendment during a Wednesday Senate hearing to avoid answering questions about his corrupt mishandling of the pandemic. The moment came days after the release of the former health official’s diaries, which documented his self-aggrandizing behavior, collusion with corporate media, and several falsehoods he told the […]

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Sara Gonzales reacts to documents proving Fauci lied about COVID: 'They let people die'



On her last day as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard released a bombshell report containing a collection of previously undisclosed communications that she says shed light on Dr. Anthony Fauci's role in the pandemic response.

“Before the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Gabbard began.

“I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents that expose exactly how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the intelligence community to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives,” she said.

Gabbard went on to explain that Fauci’s relationships within the intelligence community “enabled him to assume three key roles that shield him from scrutiny.”

“First, Dr. Fauci funded dangerous gain-of-function coronavirus research linked to Big Pharma and their pursuit of universal vaccines worth trillions of dollars,” she said.

“Second, Dr. Fauci was the behind-the-scenes adviser who … pushed the intelligence community to endorse a natural animal origin to hide his dangerous gain-of-function research that he funded using taxpayer dollars,” she explained.

“Third … he publicly pushed lies, disinformation, and censorship using every platform available,” she added.

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is disgusted, though not surprised.

“As she was speaking, I felt like I have PTSD. In fact, maybe a lot of us do,” she says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered."

“They literally, purposely, intentionally let people die so that they could have an emergency mandate for a vaccine. They literally pushed ivermectin out of the way. … The rules all changed so that they could get everyone in America to inject themselves with an experiment,” she continues.

Following the report, the DOJ is now “weighing” a criminal case against Dr. Fauci.

“Just do it,” Gonzales comments.

“Why are we wasting another day not going after him on the things that we can go after him for?” she adds.

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