From the Washington Post, August 18:
David M. Morens, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, said he was trying to protect his boss. Fauci was not accused of wrongdoing in the case.
He told a federal judge in Maryland that he deliberately diverted emails he deemed politically controversial to a personal account to avoid the possibility they might one day be publicly released and misconstrued.
Morens, 78, previously explained his actions as a misguided attempt to protect Fauci from threats and to stop misinformation about the virus from spreading. Fauci led the government’s response to the pandemic as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Prosecutors did not accuse Fauci of wrongdoing in Morens’s case.
“By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did and will continue to do so,” said Tim Belevetz, Morens’s attorney.
The Justice Department announced its case against Morens earlier this year amid escalating pressure from President Donald Trump and his allies, who continue to accuse Fauci and his top aides of misleading the public on the origins of the virus and its severity.
Many scientists, though far from all, believe the coronavirus jumped naturally from bats to humans via an intermediate animal of some kind. Trump and his supporters, however, have promoted an alternate theory that the virus escaped from a Chinese government lab, which could arguably lay blame on a rival country.
Fauci has repeatedly dismissed accusations that he sought to hide information on the virus as “simply preposterous.” Still, President Joe Biden, in his final days in office, preemptively pardoned Fauci out of concern that the Justice Department under Trump could seek to indict him....
....MUCH MORE
There will me more to come, perhaps much more depending on what Morens agreed to share with the Department of Justice in return for the plea agreement. (sealed supplement)*
Here's the U.S. Attorney's office for the District of Maryland:
Former Senior NIAID Official Pleads Guilty to Charges Connected to Concealing Federal Records During COVID-19 Pandemic
And via Court Listener:
If interested see also August 7's "Fauci Is Covering For Someone, We May Be About To Find Out Who".
Might as well try to get a step ahead of where this is going: "Fauci didn't kill himself."
