Oversight Project Applauds DOJ Indictment for Covid Origin Cover Up Conspiracy and Obstruction of Our FOIA
Oversight Project Previously Submitted a Criminal Referral to the Justice Department for David Morens’ Transparency Obstruction
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 28, 2026
Washington, D.C.–Obstructing investigation into the most likely origin of the Covid-19 Pandemic—a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lab funded by US taxpayers—ranks among the Deep State’s worst crimes.
As Covid upended, and even ended, American lives, high-level bureaucrats and a tax-payer funded NGO engaged in deception, serving personal and corrupt institutional interests. It also obscured the consequences of the American elite’s deep entanglement with a fundamentally corrupt communist system—and, in doing so, served the interests of the CCP.
In June 2025, the Oversight Project referred Morens and others to the DOJ for prosecution with a draft indictment. Today, the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted David Morens, formerly the Senior Advisor to NIAID director Anthony Fauci for allegedly concealing federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic. We applaud this action as an important first step, not just towards justice and accountability, but also toward establishing deterrence against Deep State actors who blatantly act against the interests of Americans.
We are pleased to see that the DOJ’s indictment identified many of the same alleged violations and underlying evidence laid out in our referral. We are also pleased that, among the FOIA requests from which the DOJ alleges Morrens sought to conceal his communications, was a July 22, 2022 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Oversight Project, then at the Heritage Foundation.
This case highlights the essential roles of two of Oversight Project’s core strengths: robust FOIA operations and the tenacious pursuit of legal accountability. These are key tools in achieving our ultimate goal—forcing the federal government to once again serve the interests of the citizens it exists to represent.
Alex Finnegan of the Oversight Project’s Investigative Team shared the following statement:
“The revelation that many U.S. and global institutions abandoned an honest search for the origins of COVID-19—and instead participated in a cover-up that served the interests of a foreign dictatorship—was a turning point. If we are to recover the America we knew before the pandemic, we need truth and accountability for this society-rending event. We also need a serious plan for how we are going to get the permanent government back on the same page as the American people. This is an important step in the right direction.”
Morrens was only one of the individuals named in the criminal referrals that we have provided to the DOJ. We hope that additional indictments will follow. Accountability is a necessary precondition to rebuilding trust between the American people and their government.
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