stock here: Have there been more that I missed. This cretin, pretty clearly no wife would let him wear that tie unless he was intentionally trying to look like a sad clown. “I have remorse”.
The hopeful point though, may be that they gave him a sweet heart deal, in turn he may have had to agree to testify against, his co-conspirators….see next article, Chat found those co-conspirators to be these known bad actors, we would all like to see perp walking, being put out of business:
Ecohealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, Gerald Keusch, and Anthony Fauci.
He is guilty of mass murder, but they get a plea deal for “concealing information”.
The U.S. Department of Justice just announced in a press release that Former Senior NIAID Official Pleads Guilty to Charges Connected to Concealing Federal Records During COVID-19 Pandemic.
David M. Morens served as a Senior Advisor to the Director (specifically in NIAID’s Office of the Director) from 2006 through 2022, and was also a long-time senior advisor to former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
================================== Who else did the perp walk? ANSWER: NO ONE
As of August 19, 2026, if we define the scope narrowly as COVID origins, the NIH/NIAID → EcoHealth Alliance → Wuhan Institute of Virology funding chain, coronavirus research, and alleged concealment of information about that research, I can find only one criminal guilty plea so far: David Morens.
Morens pleaded guilty on August 18, 2026 to conspiracy to commit offenses and defraud the United States. DOJ says the conspiracy involved hiding federal records concerning coronavirus research grants, efforts to restore the terminated bat-coronavirus grant, exchanging nonpublic NIH information, and illegal gratuities. He faces up to five years and is scheduled for sentencing November 12.
| Person / organization | Criminal status tied to research/origins | What actually happened |
|---|---|---|
| David Morens | Guilty plea | Conspiracy involving concealment of records regarding coronavirus grants and efforts concerning the WIV-linked grant. |
| Peter Daszak | No conviction found; no public criminal charge found | HHS formally debarred him for five years from federal funding in January 2025. That’s an administrative sanction, not a criminal conviction. |
| EcoHealth Alliance | No criminal conviction found | Also formally debarred for five years. HHS-OIG previously found grant-management deficiencies and $89,171 in unallowable costs; EcoHealth said it reimbursed NIH. |
| Gerald Keusch | No charge/conviction found | Public reporting has identified him as apparently corresponding to one of Morens’s unnamed co-conspirators, but that does not mean he has been charged. |
| Anthony Fauci | No criminal conviction or charge in this matter | He is not charged in the Morens prosecution. Recent congressional contempt/referral activity is legally quite different from a criminal conviction. |
| WIV / Shi Zhengli / Ralph Baric | No U.S. criminal convictions found tied to this funding/origins matter | They have been central to investigations and debate, but I find no criminal conviction arising from this particular funding/research chain. |
There is one important development in yesterday’s Morens plea that makes this more than simply a FOIA-recordkeeping case. DOJ explicitly says Morens, “Co-Conspirator 1,” “Co-Conspirator 2,” and others conspired to defraud the United States, and that they agreed to hide communications concerning the grant. DOJ also says Morens and Co-Conspirator 1 conspired regarding illegal gratuities—including wine—and that the communications concerned influencing NIH funding decisions.
That means there are explicitly other alleged participants in the admitted conspiracy, even though DOJ has not publicly charged those people in the materials I can find. That distinction is worth watching: Morens’s plea potentially gives prosecutors a cooperating witness and sworn admissions regarding the conduct of other people.
There have, of course, been large numbers of COVID-related criminal convictions if we broaden “the entire COVID event” to PPP/EIDL fraud, unemployment fraud, fraudulent testing, counterfeit medical products, etc. For example, DOJ reported 74 guilty defendants in just the Middle District of Florida’s COVID-fraud effort by late 2024, and in May 2026 Jia Bei Zhu was convicted on 12 counts involving fraudulent COVID tests and FDA violations. Those cases, however, have nothing to do with COVID origins or gain-of-function/research funding.
So the answer to the question I think you’re really asking is: Morens appears to be the first person to actually plead guilty to a federal crime squarely inside the NIH/EcoHealth/Wuhan-coronavirus-research/origins controversy. I do not find a second conviction yet.
The more interesting next step would be to map Morens’s “Co-Conspirator 1,” “Co-Conspirator 2,” “Company 1,” and “Senior NIAID Official 1” against the emails and congressional record and show who almost certainly corresponds to each designation—and exactly what Morens has now admitted they did together. I can do that surgically.