SCIENCE
Guns and bulletproof vests: How federal agents arrested Fauci aide
Apr 29 2026
When federal agents came to the home of David Morens on Monday with an arrest warrant for allegedly concealing federal records related to the debate about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, they behaved as if the 78-year-old retired scientist was a violent criminal.
Science has learned that Morens, an influenza researcher who worked at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) until 2022 and was an aide to its former director, Anthony Fauci, was having his morning coffee at his Chester, Maryland, home when he heard loud pounding on the door. He opened it to find a half-dozen federal agents carrying guns and wearing tactical gear, including bulletproof vests, according to two sources who spoke with him but asked not to be identified. Another team of officers stood in the distance and observed, as did neighbors.
The agents did not harm Morens, but took off his pants and shirt, handcuffed him, and drove him 65 kilometers to the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he was fingerprinted, photographed, and jailed. He was released on his own recognizance later in the day, but was asked to return to Greenbelt and surrender his passport, which he did.
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Morens is accused of violations including trying to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act by using personal email rather than his government account in efforts to help Peter Daszak, former head of the EcoHealth Alliance, a now-defunct nonprofit research organization. Daszak’s NIAID grant had been cut in 2020 as a partisan debate over the origins of SARS-CoV-2 gathered steam. The grant funded research on bat coronaviruses, and Daszak had subcontracted work to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.
https://www.science.org/content/article/guns-and-bulletproof-vests-how-federal-agents-arrested-fauci-aide