Former Fauci adviser Dr. David Morens pleads guilty to concealing Covid records | Hacker News Reader

Former Fauci adviser Dr. David Morens pleads guilty to concealing Covid records

npr.org

5 pointstrhway10 comments

> He was indicted in April for allegedly trying to hide email exchanges about that research by using his personal email instead of his government email.

I am so glad this administration is going after everyone who does work comms using personal accounts.

The "records" in this case are likely the researchers saying: "WTF is happening, my work is canceled, and it seems like the politicians are starting to talk about us as scapegoats to be metaphorically lynched, let's talk about this away from our government work."

As opposed to, say, giant binders labeled Proof The Conspiracy Is Real on the front.

> Months after the pandemic started in early 2020, President Donald Trump ordered NIAID to cancel the grant [...which] led Daszak to seek advice from Morens and also Keusch, who previously had headed a different institute at the National Institutes of Health before moving to Boston University. They agreed to communicate with Morens via a Gmail account rather than his federal email to avoid their exchanges potentially becoming public through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

-- https://www.science.org/content/article/former-fauci-adviser...

It wasn’t a Conspiracy for them. It was a fact of life for them, and they worked hard to cover bottoms of their spines.

The excuse for an conspiracy is the belief of a conspiracy.

Seems like a completely bullshit politically motivated hitjob on this guy for making a common procedural error (using a personal email address for something official).

If the actual contents of his email were damning, they'd be publishing them all over the place.

Like a classic manager Fauci got himself a pardon while leaving his people out in the wild :)

If you're going to look upwards for blame, why stop there? Keep going and you reach all the the White House bigwigs busy violating the Presidential Records Act and FOIA willy-nilly.

I mean, remember that one top-manager who kept ripping official work documents up to throw them in the toilet? He also stole classified documents from work after he was fired, shared them with other people, refused to return them [0] and destroyed security camera footage by somehow flooding it with indoor pool water. [1]

[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/gove...

[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/donald-trump-mar-a-l...

In the words of Cris Carter: Always have a fall guy.

You seem to be implying something, care to elaborate?

> "When you're a government official you swear an oath, you're working for a federal agency, you're just held to a higher standard," said Robert Fisher. (a Boston attorney who is not involved in the Morens case )

Well that has to be the joke of the year.

One government official has made 30,573 false or misleading claims from 2016 to 2020, [0] and an uncounted large number from January 2025 to date. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements...

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