Oversight Project Hails David Morens’ Guilty Plea for Obstructing Our Investigation
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 19, 2026
Washington, D.C.– The Oversight Project welcomes David Morens’s guilty plea to one count of conspiring to defraud the United States stemming from his role in a scheme to evade our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and the Federal Records Act. Court documents show Morens and his co-conspirators defrauded the United States by working together to counter the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab, restoring NIH grants to grantees whose grants were cancelled after discovery that taxpayer funds supported research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and an exchange of gifts and other benefits. According to the guilty plea, all of these activities followed an agreement among the co-conspirators 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. The conspirators followed this scheme to evade our investigation.
This is a major victory as the Oversight Project has fought to expose the misconduct surrounding the federal government’s handling of COVID-19 records and communications through robust Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) operations and the tenacious pursuit of legal accountability. In June 2025, we referred Morens and others to the Department of Justice for prosecution with a draft indictment. More than a year later, Morens has admitted in federal court that he diverted government-related emails to a personal account in an effort to evade public records requirements and obstruct the disclosure of government communications.
The guilty plea validates the Oversight Project’s longstanding concerns about Morens’s conduct. In July 2022, the Oversight Project submitted FOIA requests seeking records concerning the origins of COVID-19 and related government communications. Records subsequently obtained by the DOJ showed that Morens had used a personal email account to circumvent public records laws, including in connection with sensitive information about the origins of COVID-19. One of the Oversight Project’s FOIA requests was listed in the Morens indictment among the FOIA requests he sought to evade through his participation in the conspiracy.
We are pleased to see that Morens is finally being held accountable for his actions during the pandemic and will continue pursuing accountability for officials who abuse their positions, evade public records laws, or obstruct the rights of the American people to know what their government is up to.
Oversight Project President Mike Howell gave this statement:
This accountability does not happen without the Oversight Project being a dog on the bone. It was our investigation that Morens pled guilty to obstructing. We wrote and handed off the draft referral. Many people wanted to politically move on, but we insisted on justice.
While we are pleased with the beginning of COVID-19 related accountability, there is so much more to be had. Fauci is walking around with a fake autopen pardon that President Trump has said is null, void, and of no further effect. That pardon shouldn’t be protecting him.”
Watch Mike’s official victim impact statement here: https://x.com/MHowellTweets/status/2089852499570348405
See how our autopen work led to Fauci’s refusal to answer questions from Congress: https://itsyourgov.org/press/oversight-project-puts-fauci-in-box-autopen-pardon-in-conflict-with-claims-for-fifth