Thread by @realjusthuman

🧵United States v. Morens

David M. Morens served as a senior advisor in NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006-2022.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Morens, two conspirators, and others, conspired to have an NIH grant for bat coronavirus research reinstated after it had been cancelled by the NIH due to information pointing at the Wuhan Institute of Virology being the source of the COVID-19 outbreak.

To this end, Morens and others concealed information and misled officials, the scientific community, the media, and the public as to the true origins of the virus.

Count 1 - 18 USC 371 - Conspiracy Against the United States

Counts 2 & 3 - 18 USC 1519 - Destruction, Alteration, or Faslification of Records in a Federal Investigation

Counts 4 & 5 - 18 USC 2071 - Concealment, Removal, or Mutilation of Records

Morens is facing up to 46 years in prison if convicted.

Beginning in 2020 and continuing for years after, Morens and others used their personal GMail accounts to comunicate about the cancelled grant, getting another one, and controlling the narrative re: the origins of COVID-19.

They used the Gmail ccounts so as to avoid FOIA request.

Morens enlisted "members of a prominent professional medical organization" to "speak out on behalf of" the "bat coronavirus grant."

Morens "falsely [stated]" to CC1 "that the NIAID FOIA officer had told Morens that he could 'cover' his 'rear' 'by deleting emails and making use of foia delays.'"

"I need to keep this off of govt email and govt phone text."

"Delete or send to gmail."

Morens authored and submitted "a scientific commentary to a prominent medical journal for publication that advocated COVID-19 emerged from nature and not from a lab."

Morens efforts paid off when "NIH [] awarded a $7.5 million grant to" the same company who's bat coronavirus grant has been cancelled.

Upon learning of the grant approval, Morens sent CC1 an email saying, "Ahem... do I get a kickback????"

CC-1 replied, "of course there's a kick-back. It starts with 5 more years of FOIA requests [...] I just hope it doesn't culminate in 5 years of Federal jail..."

Morens and others continued concealing their communications.

"pay attention to the email address you use... The less we provide the enemy the better."

"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."

Morens learns that few things are ever truly deleted forever.

"...I now learn that every email I ever got/sent since 1998 is captured and will be turned over, whether or not I instantly deleted it..."

The group learns that some of these emails are going to go public.

"There is some embarrassing stuff in there, the most heinous is... Some details of what happened with NIH cancellation... my response, and how you helped me shape it...

If these emails are with reporters, they'll use them to create stories as per above..."

"Powerful cabal of scientists from within NIH helped draft anti lab-leak narrative" and "CC-1 suspected WIV may have continued GoF work outside of NIH grant"

"we were working in a cabal to orchestrate stuff"

"should be safe to communicate safely with you, CC1, and others, as long as we use my private gmail."

"keep all communications like this on priate email so that it can't be retrieved via a FOIA."

"leading scientist conspire to undermine investigation into lab leak theory via back-channel..."

They sure did.

Here is the indictment.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

Press Release from DOJ
justice.gov/opa/pr/former-…