Dr. Anthony Fauci has been dragged deeper into the COVID origins scandal after newly detailed court records exposed a backchannel operation involving his senior advisor and EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak as they worked to counter the lab-leak theory and protect controversial coronavirus research.
The explosive communications show former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) senior adviser Dr. David Morens moving sensitive discussions onto private Gmail accounts while assuring Daszak that Fauci was aware of what was happening behind the scenes.
The records also reveal Daszak personally thanking Fauci for publicly helping “dispel” the lab-leak theory while Morens worked privately to protect EcoHealth and restore its federal funding.
Morens has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges over the scheme.
However, the newly exposed communications are now raising fresh questions about exactly what Fauci knew while his own senior adviser was conducting what Daszak himself celebrated as “behind the scenes shenanigans.”
Fauci Was ‘Fully Aware’ as Backchannel Operation Unfolded
The scandal erupted after the Trump administration suspended EcoHealth’s National Institutes of Health grant in April 2020 amid mounting scrutiny of the organization’s taxpayer-funded bat coronavirus research in China.
EcoHealth had funneled federal money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the laboratory that would later become central to questions about whether COVID-19 escaped from a lab.
After the funding was suspended, Morens began communicating with Daszak outside official government channels.
“This is sent from my gmail account. Please send all replies here To gmail,” Morens wrote.
“There are things I cant say except [Senior NIAID Official 1] is aware and I have learned that there are ongoing efforts within NIH to steer through this with minimal damage to you.”
Morens made clear that he intended to fight to restore EcoHealth’s funding.
“My boxing gloves are on and laced up,” he told Daszak.
“Let’s win this anti-science battle, get you refunded… then settle the scores and kick some ass,” he added.
The newly detailed records also describe Fauci as “fully aware” while “damage control” was underway.
That revelation is particularly significant because Fauci was simultaneously emerging as one of the most influential public voices dismissing suspicions that COVID-19 may have originated in a laboratory.
Daszak Personally Thanked Fauci for Helping ‘Dispel’ Lab-Leak Theory
Daszak’s own communications show that he recognized the importance of Fauci’s public statements.
In April 2020, Daszak personally emailed Fauci to thank him for pushing back against the lab-leak theory.
Daszak praised Fauci’s comments as “brave” and said they would “help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’ origins.”
He also told Fauci that he looked forward to thanking him personally.
Fauci responded:
“Peter: Many thanks for your kind note. Best Regards, Tony.”
Behind the scenes, meanwhile, Fauci’s senior adviser was helping Daszak navigate the crisis threatening EcoHealth’s funding and reputation.
Morens even agreed to produce a scientific commentary promoting Daszak’s work while keeping the EcoHealth president’s involvement out of sight, creating the appearance of an independent scientific assessment.
Prosecutors say Morens and his co-conspirators concealed communications while working to “counter the narrative that Covid-19 leaked from a lab.”
‘Behind the Scenes Shenanigans’
Daszak was apparently so pleased with Morens’s assistance that he sent two bottles of The Prisoner Red Napa Valley wine to the government scientist’s Maryland home.
The accompanying message was remarkably candid.
“This is the first of what I hope will be a continued series of expressions of gratitude for your advice, support and behind the scenes shenanigans in my battle against your bosses boss, his boss and the ultimate boss on the hill,” Daszak wrote.
The “ultimate boss” was President Donald Trump.
Daszak praised Morens’s “courage and commitment” given what he called the “vindictive nature of the Administration.”
Morens would later publish an article promoting the argument that COVID-19 emerged through natural spillover while defending the importance of Daszak’s research.
At the same time, Morens was openly discussing how to keep damaging communications away from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
He described FOIA requests as “dreadful and paranoia-inducing.”
“We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails, and if we found them we’d delete them,” Morens wrote.
He even boasted that he could “make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d.”
Morens has now pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses or to defraud the United States and faces up to five years in prison.
Neither Fauci nor Daszak has been charged in connection with Morens’s case.
15,000 Coronavirus Samples Were Sitting in Wuhan
The backchannel discussions become even more alarming when viewed alongside what Daszak was privately telling Morens about the scale of EcoHealth’s work in Wuhan.
In April 2020, Daszak told Morens that EcoHealth still had “15,000 coronavirus samples in freezers in Wuhan” and could sequence “700+ CoVs.”
Those samples were sitting at the center of the very research network facing questions about the origins of a pandemic that was rapidly spreading across the planet.
Yet rather than aggressively investigating the laboratory-origin possibility, powerful scientific figures publicly pushed the natural-spillover explanation.
Daszak himself helped orchestrate the infamous 2020 letter published in The Lancet that condemned lab-leak suspicions as “conspiracy theories.”
His own conflicts surrounding the Wuhan research were not initially disclosed.
Daszak was then placed on The Lancet’s task force investigating COVID’s origins before eventually being removed amid mounting scrutiny of those conflicts.
FBI Ordered Agents Not to Stop Daszak
The extraordinary treatment of Daszak continued after his controversial World Health Organization mission to China.
When Daszak returned to the United States in February 2021, Customs and Border Protection reportedly identified him as “an extremely high person of interest.”
Officers prepared a Tactical Terrorism Response Team examination.
Records showed officials wanted to question Daszak about his extensive relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, his NIH-funded coronavirus research, his contacts, and the biological samples connected to that work.
Officials also noted that “much of the funding DASZAK receives is put towards gain of function research.”
But the examination never happened.
Three days before Daszak arrived, the FBI’s New York field office intervened.
“Please be advised FBI New York requested we do not stop the subject,” officials were told.
The planned examination was cancelled, and Daszak passed through JFK without the interrogation officers had prepared.
Intelligence Challenging the Official Narrative Was Sidelined
Other evidence challenging the preferred natural-origin narrative was also pushed into the background.
Defense Intelligence Agency analysis dating back to 2020 concluded that the molecular biology and genome of SARS-CoV-2 were “consistent with the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 was a lab-engineered virus.”
A later Department of Defense report revealed that intelligence supporting a possible laboratory origin faced restrictions on dissemination.
Meanwhile, the influential “Proximal Origin” paper became one of the primary scientific weapons used to dismiss the lab-leak theory publicly.
Yet subsequent records exposed extensive behind-the-scenes coordination surrounding that paper and showed that scientists privately entertained concerns about laboratory involvement that were far less dismissive than the message eventually presented to the public.
Fauci Faces Fresh Questions
EcoHealth and Daszak were eventually debarred from federal funding for five years after investigations into the organization’s taxpayer-funded coronavirus research and compliance with federal requirements.
EcoHealth has since collapsed.
Morens has now admitted to participating in a conspiracy to hide federal records.
And the communications leave a damaging documentary trail running straight through Fauci’s own office.
The critical distinction is that Daszak’s wine and “behind the scenes shenanigans” message were directed to Morens, not Fauci.
But Morens was Fauci’s senior adviser.
The records show Morens operating private communications channels to protect Daszak, prosecutors say the conspiracy sought to counter the lab-leak narrative, and contemporaneous communications described Fauci as aware of efforts occurring inside NIH.
At the same time, Daszak was personally thanking Fauci for public statements that he believed would “help dispel” suspicions about COVID’s origins.
The emerging picture raises a question that can no longer be brushed aside:
How much did Fauci know about what his own senior adviser was doing behind the scenes while Americans were being told the lab-leak theory was little more than a conspiracy?
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