WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) - The Trump administration has indicted a former National Institutes of Health official over allegations of evading federal records requests related to COVID-19 pandemic research grants and the use of personal email for government business.
A grand jury in Maryland charged David Morens, a senior official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) during the pandemic, with conspiring to evade records requests received by the agency between April
2020 and December 2022.
The indictment, filed under seal April 16 and unsealed on Monday, also names two alleged co-conspirators - a New York-based nonprofit organization focused on infectious diseases and a physician at an academic institution that received NIH grants.
“As alleged in the indictment, Dr. Morens and his co-conspirators deliberately concealed information and falsified records in an effort to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19," Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote in a statement announcing the charges on Tuesday.
Representatives for Morens could not be immediately reached for comment on the allegations.
He faces five charges, including conspiracy; records destruction, alteration or falsification in federal investigations and concealment, removal or mutilation of records.
The indictment is the latest action by Republican U.S. President Donald Trump's administration related to the origins of the coronavirus that shuttered much of the world starting in late 2019 during his first term in the White House.
The World Health Organization and most scientists say a spillover from nature was the most likely cause for the pandemic. Investigations have been hampered by a lack of data from China, but U.S. intelligence services said last year that a lab leak was probably the cause.
A Republican-led U.S. Senate panel is also probing the origins of the pandemic, including a records request to leading medical journal the Lancet.
Some Republicans have accused former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci of suppressing the theory that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak in China. Fauci has strongly denied suppressing that theory, telling a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee in 2024 he never influenced research on the origins of the virus.
Morens, an adviser to Fauci, was also called to testify last year by the Republican-led subcommittee on COVID, which subpoenaed tens of thousands of his emails including those between him and the NIAID head.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; editing by David Gaffen)
