WASHINGTON — Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser at the National Institutes of Health, was indicted on federal charges alleging he conspired to conceal and destroy communications related to COVID-19 research during the pandemic. The Justice Department said Morens, 78, used a personal Gmail account to circumvent public records laws while employed at the NIH.

He faces charges of conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting. He could face decades in prison if convicted. Morens made his initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge on Monday and is set to be arraigned next week.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the alleged conduct was part of an effort to suppress alternative theories about COVID-19's origins. "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," Blanche said. "Government officials have a solemn duty to provide honest, well-grounded facts and advice in service of the public interest — not to advance their own personal or ideological agendas."

Prosecutors allege that Morens and two unnamed co-conspirators worked together to defraud the United States by shielding federal records related to the pandemic from the public, including discussions about an effort to revive a coronavirus grant. According to the indictment, the group used his personal Gmail account to exchange emails about COVID-19, the bat coronavirus grant, and requests for documents about the grant and the virus's origins to evade federal public records laws. The account was also used to share nonpublic NIH information and back-channel material with a senior NIAID official. Between April 2020 and December 2022, NIAID received Freedom of Information Act requests from Judicial Watch and the Heritage Foundation seeking communications between Morens, the grant recipient, and its president.

Co-conspirator 1 served as the president and CEO of a New York-based nonprofit group that received a grant in 2014 titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence." The Wuhan Institute of Virology received a subaward from the nonprofit on that grant. Emails released in 2024 by the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic indicate that the New York organization is the EcoHealth Alliance and co-conspirator 1 is its president, Peter Daszak. The NIH terminated the bat coronavirus grant in April 2020 after saying it was reviewing allegations that the pandemic resulted from a lab leak at the Wuhan institute.

The indictment claims that Morens authored a medical journal submission that sought to counter the claim that COVID-19 emerged from a lab and instead focused on evidence that it came from nature, intended to benefit the EcoHealth Alliance and its president. Prosecutors said he used his position to engage in official acts favorable to the alliance and its president and received gratuities, including a gift of wine sent in June 2020 to his Maryland residence for his behind-the-scenes work. He served as a senior adviser to NIAID's Office of the Director from 2006 through 2022.