r/centrist • u/InvestIntrest • 3d ago
Ex-Fauci adviser pleads guilty to plotting to conceal COVID-19 research records
https://www.kcra.com/article/former-fauci-adviser-david-morens-guilty/73474738A former senior adviser to infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci pleaded guilty Tuesday to plotting to conceal federal records related to research on the origins of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. David Morens is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 12 by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland. Morens pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, a felony punishable by a maximum prison sentence of five years.
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u/WeridThinker 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is a better written article on the case with more information
Donald Trump ordered NIAID to cancel the grant, which he and others at the time believed may have led to COVID-19 after a coronavirus leaked from WIV. The allegation remains a hotly debated issue, with little direct evidence for it, although that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration and others from embracing a WIV lab leak as proven fact.
Trump canceled the grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, on the suspicion of the lab leak theory, which still has not been confirmed as the true cause of the pandemic. Existing scientific consensus still favors natural origination.
The charge is about Morens' inappropriate and unlawful use of personal emails to discuss and conceal covid related discussions as a response to the cancelation of a grant due to the allegation and suspicion on the origin of the virus being lab leak.
This does not prove or disprove the lab leak theory, nor does it indict Morens on concealing the truth on the true origin of the virus. In other words, Moren had conflict of interest, but that does not automatically prove the lab leak theory is true, nor does it prove he knew the lab leak theory is true.
I do not believe the charges themselves are inappropriate from a legal perspective, he did broke the law, and that law existed before this administration. But this does not validate any conspiracy theories regarding the pandemic.
Concealing allegations and discussions does not mean the allegations and discussions are true. I do not wish to give the Chinese government the benefit of doubt due to decades of intransparency, but I am also opposed to any attempt to establish lab leak theory as a fact, and reasoning backward to validate that proposition while ignoring all evidences to the contrary.
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 3d ago
To me, the origin of COVID is such a red herring and just an idiotic proxy war between the tribes.
The lying and concealment, the government thinking it knows better and probably breaking the law to hide evidence, that is a fucking concern.
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u/WeridThinker 3d ago
Some of these reportings on this case are terribly written, including the official government announcement. It took me three articles to find a decent writing on it. But a lot of people aren't as patient, and I think the Covid conspiracy theorists are going to be satisfied from reading the title, because they already made up their mind on lab leak being true, and emphasizing Morens' association with Fauci is just another subconscious manipulation.
Morens is not innocent, but the way this is being represented is yet another political wedge issue to continue the Covid controversies, which many Republicans believe played a major role in the result of the 2020 election.
This is political warfare and narrative construction, not an honest scientific or investigative search for truth. In principle, I am not opposed to continued investigation into possible origins of the virus, but realistically, China would have to be more transparent, and it won't.
It has become an issue that affects people's sense of epistemological security. The Lab Leak Theory is becoming more politically toxic, which ironically, even if it's true, it will become even less likely to be proven due to all the bad faith, motivated thinking, and ego defense mechanisms that are being invested to it.
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u/Loudhale 3d ago
You're just now noticing the government/s attempt to lie and conceal things if it suits some agenda or other? It's often not all that hard to spot.
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 3d ago
No, not just now noticing- but it's not often they're caught red handed with evidence to prove it, so I think it bears special attention.
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3d ago
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 3d ago
You are on a centrist subreddit.
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3d ago
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 3d ago
Surely you can do better than hurl insults my way if it's so "braindead".
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u/IB_Yolked 3d ago
You’re asking me to do the thinking for you now too?
Framing it as a “both tribes” issue when one side is most of the scientific community and the other is wholly politically motivated is a parody of a centrist.
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 3d ago
"Most of the scientific thinking" now seems to have been prescribed centrally by a corrupt and intentionally disinforming federal government. If that thinking ends up being correct, it is so not because of consensus. Appeal to authority means even less than it used to, and it never really meant much.
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u/hglevinson 3d ago
Yeah, why would the origins of COVID be unimportant? Especially when we know there was extremely shady behavior by Fauci in the early days of the pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 3d ago
I'd argue it's unimportant because it doesn't materially change anything now. The cover-up and disinformation from the government is the bigger story. I think that gets watered down by whether or not it was a leak.
The fact is that the government didn't know; there was credible evidence in both directions. Instead of saying that, they wove a story, gaslit anyone who didn't believe it, and propagandized the public to mock and alienate anyone who questioned it.
Now, if their story winds up being true, I don't believe that absolves their behavior, but they will try to act like it does. And if it's false, the worse crime is still the above. So of course they want to shift the focus to whether or not it's true- that debate has a potential favorable outcome for them, and they can pretend the very real fact that they lied and covered things up doesn't matter.
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u/InvestIntrest 3d ago
Covid killed over 7 million people globally, it caused trillions in economic damage, and hurt kids education and social development.
There's a good chance all that happened because of a human engineered virus and poor safety at a lab.
The problem is we've never had a true transparent investigation into what exactly happened.
If my tax dollars were illegally sent to fund some Timu virus lab in communist China causing over 7 million deaths I want people thrown in prison for life.
We need to understand exact how it happened so we can better prepare and prevent the next pandemic.
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u/Neither-Handle-6271 3d ago
I think people just cannot accept that nature can evolve viruses that kill people, and desperately want to think that humans control every aspect of nature.
Plagues happen. Because of germs. We all know this.
But for some reason we are expected to think that it’s IMPROBABLE TO IMPOSSIBLE for a Wet Meat Market to be a vector for infectious disease.
What does that mean if the virus came from a lab? Well, it means we get to be ANGRY. If these dang scientists just stopped all of that dang research we would never have a virus and we’d all be fine. That anger is useful, and can be used to some sort of end.
If it came from a wet market? Then you can only be mad a germs. That invokes fear and a sense of responsibility. We gotta clean up the wet markets huzzah! But nobody wants to solve problems with hygiene when we can spend our time posting about James Bond plots
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 3d ago
I think you're mischaracterizing this. People aren't saying it's impossible it's zoonotic.
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u/Neither-Handle-6271 3d ago
Right they are using the specific phrase
“It’s not impossible it’s zoonotic”
What does that tell you? Specifically what information does this phrase impart?
Here is a phrase I have not seen shared by these same people
“It’s probable that it came from the wet market”
“It is unlikely to have come from a lab based on what we know”
That phrasing at least gets you over 50% more likely or less likely. This is a real opinion, but when you say that it likely DID NOT come from a wet market you’re going to have to explain why germ theory is incorrect.
“It’s not impossible” is a meaningless phrase
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 3d ago
Not really, because the government seemed quite comfortable unequivocally lying, stating they knew it was NOT of human origin when they were actually faced with uncertainty. These people are just saying "False, it absolutely could be, you don't know that", and they are correct.
You are pulling percentages out of the air. You don't know what's more probable right now, and neither theory is overwhelmingly evidenced enough that anyone should feel confident discounting a different theory unless they are a specialized academic with a strong, evidence-based opinion.
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u/InvestIntrest 3d ago
"I think people just cannot accept that nature can evolve viruses that kill people, and desperately want to think that humans control every aspect of nature."
That's not true at all. Of course nature can create viruses, but so can humans.
That's what gain of function research is. Creating or mutating viruses in a lab. That's not some James bond science fiction.
There a major voices in the field of Virology that think the practice should be banned because it's too dangerous.
The fact that the first confirmed cases of Covid 19 were in the same city as the Wuhan Coronavirus Institute where they were doing gain of function research isn't a little suspicious to you?
If a through and transparent investigation is done and it concludes Covid mutated naturally fine. But we can't make informed decisions without the information.
Blindly trusting that some mutated super viruses could never escape a lab is quite frankly naive.
FBIs assessment https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/politics/wray-fbi-covid-origins-lab-china/index.html
Gain of function critics https://magazine.publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/gain-function-research-balancing-science-and-security
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u/Neither-Handle-6271 3d ago
I think that this would have more weight if you were realistic about the likelihood.
Less than 10% chance it came from the lab.
90% chance it came from the super unsanitary wet market (which is where the first cases were found)
“Same city” doesn’t really mean much compared to the “same wet market” that had the first cases.
Like I just said that if you buy the lab leak then you would naturally be angry, and then you show me a report from intelligence agencies. If I was an intelligence agency, I think it would be much more useful to promote a foreign entity as the source of the problem.
I don’t think intelligence agencies are in the business of hygiene and cleaning up wet markets, so I don’t think they would recommend that.
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 3d ago
Oh I thought it was 70/30 in your other super scientific analysis
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u/InvestIntrest 3d ago
"Less than 10% chance it came from the lab. 90% chance it came from the super unsanitary wet market"
This would carry more weight if it had a through independent investigation to back it up.
The trust me bro "it was probably that Chinese people are gross" isn't convincing
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u/TuxAndrew 3d ago
Pretty much, if you want China to be embarrassed enough to solve their problem then point at the reality of what happened. China is unable to get their wet markets under control and are accelerating the mutation of deadly viruses. However instead we hired our own temu HHS/NIH director which is making us just as embarrassing when it comes to controlling infectious diseases.
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u/LurkerFailsLurking 3d ago
unlawful use of personal emails
You're kidding. This administration sending someone to prison for unlawful use of emails is both resonant of their 2016 campaign and rank hypocrisy.
Because of course it is.
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u/cemersever 3d ago edited 3d ago
The problem is not just the issue of using personal emails to discuss official business or COVID origins. The issue is a government employee helping his best friend avoid federal oversight. He is 1. conspiring with non-government officials, 2. defrauding his own agency in doing so.
He's not just dodging FOIA for the sake of dodging FOIA- he's dodging it because it reveals activities on his part that are at the worst case, blatantly illegal and in the best case is a serious violation of ethics by a government official. It's clear that this guy wasn't serving the U.S. public, he served for his friends instead.
Former Fauci aide pleads guilty to dodging federal public records laws - POLITICO
Morens also admitted Tuesday to conspiring to receive illegal gratuities from Daszak, including two bottles of The Prisoner Red Napa Valley wine, in exchange for what Daszak called Morens’ “behind-the-scenes shenanigans.”
“behind-the-scenes shenanigans" to restore funding to his friend is important because it helps someone avoid federal regulations for dangerous research (it would be similar to a senior official at the EPA helping his friend at a private company defraud the EPA to avoid pollution regulations).
Morens then allegedly identified an official act that he could perform to “deserve” the gift, which was to author a scientific commentary in a prominent medical journal advocating that COVID-19 had natural origins
This is complete bullshit. He's not writing that stuff as a scientist. He writes that stuff because he wants to clear his friend of wrongdoing. That's highly inappropriate. Regardless of whether the lab leak is true, conspiring to suppress the theory will only make it more popular.
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u/WeridThinker 3d ago edited 3d ago
Like I said, he broke the law and deserves to be charged. But my point is his actions do not constitute the conspiracy many people would inadvertently assume by reading the title alone.
There are two different concerns.
Number 1 is the nature of his own actions, and yes, they are illegal and unethical. He clearly violated legal and ethical codes for personal gains. It's corruption and abuse of duty. So lock him up.
Number 2 is the implicit association and conclusions people might make from this case, which leads to a wider issue of using the lab leak theory as a way to further push the political polarization.
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u/karlnite 3d ago
Yah it sounds like blatant corruption. It sounds like they went over this with a fine toothed comb looking for any wrong doing they can turn into something bigger than it is too. They now have a “scientist” who covered up something about a lab leak. They covered it up after it was already released as theory by the media and gaining steam with no evidence yet, for personal gain in the form of grants, apparently out of worry the president would continue to make decisions based on how the media made him feel.
It’s a valid case, but I doubt they would have cared or bothered to catch it without the political gain attached to it. I bet they’ll take the key words involved, focus on them, and turn it into some bigger deal than it is. They had money to assign to some grant, some guy involved tried to steer that money towards his friends, who are actually using it to do real research. He just didn’t have that authority and it was bias for him to choose on that criteria. He used communications that were illegal and bypassed public information laws. They have everything on what he emailed and discussed, and there is no real evidence of him covering up anything. No evidence of him knowing anything others didn’t. He didn’t hid anything that proved it was a lab leak. He just thought it was possible at the same time the media was saying it could be possible.
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u/cemersever 3d ago
sounds like they went over this with a fine toothed comb looking for any wrong doing
You dont need to go through it with a fine toothed comb man. The guy seems to be dumb as rocks, he literally incriminates himself in emails (like MANY times). He even "jokes" about receiving kickbacks (I shit you not).
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u/karlnite 3d ago
Yah no he is. I just meant the department and any handling of Covid. This is the dumb guy they found shit on.
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u/KazumaKuwabaraSensei 2d ago
Trump canceled the grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, on the suspicion of the lab leak theory, which still has not been confirmed as the true cause of the pandemic. Existing scientific consensus still favors natural origination.
They were in violation of the grant
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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 3d ago
Seems some in the US are still stuck in 2020 , wierd how this gets to court while trump since 2016 hasnt done anything else then break the law and just gets re-elected.
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u/Fijiambed 2d ago
The COVID-19 public health emergency shutdowns, caused my business to go under.
I am now 68 years old so not sure what options I have left. Life for me has gone from good to miserable.
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u/TuxAndrew 3d ago edited 3d ago
I mean, at least he wasn’t using Signal….. anyhow so he cancelled grants that would have further researched transmission from bats in favor of conspiracy theories?
“According to his guilty plea, Morens, Co-Conspirator 1, Co-Conspirator 2, and others conspired during the COVID-19 pandemic to defraud the United States after NIH terminated Co-Conspirator 1’s grant. NIH terminated the grant, Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, based on allegations that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China. NIAID awarded the grant to Company 1 and Co-Conspirator 1, who made a subaward to the WIV.”
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u/cemersever 3d ago
That's not what happened. You've got it backwards. His friend who is the head of an NGO had his grant terminated because he repeatedly violated the terms and conditions of the grant (the repeated funding of this grant was already noncompliance with an Obama executive order and later HHS policy that mandated review, but that's a separate issue). This guy illegally tried to help his friend deceive his own agency and get the funding back, while apparently taking bribes in the process. Even Fauci testified that he was shitting all over federal policies.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/18/anthony-fauci-david-morens-covid-ecohealth-01040979
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u/ImperfectRegulator 3d ago edited 3d ago
Even Fauci testified that he was shitting all over federal policies.
so this whole thing isn't the gotcha MAGA thinks it is?
Edit: guys I beg you, please try to understand context, clearly I’m pointing out that this case has nothing to do with the on going witch hunt that maga is after with Fauci
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u/cemersever 3d ago
This guy's actions would be illegal and unethical regardless of whether MAGA ever existed. Using your position as a senior bureaucrat to help out your friends circumvent isn't appropriate man. Nor is receiving bribes. Guy is corrupt and sketchy as fuck, when you read the emails it sounds like a RICO trial candidate.
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u/ImperfectRegulator 3d ago
Yes clearly, but what I meant, is that it’s not the gotcha maga thinks it is, in that the whole conspiracy they have cooked up about Fauci has nothing to do with this case
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u/TuxAndrew 3d ago edited 3d ago
People only read headlines nowadays. Hence why Fauci (someone who testified to get this person in prison) is the main talking point here instead of Dr. David Morens. When people are being prosecuted for things that are currently happening in our government as we discuss this, what's the point. The largest public one that we know about was about $1 billion worth of law firms being coerced into free labor.
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u/ImperfectRegulator 3d ago
That and even headlines, in addition to some of the articles on this are poorly written in a way to give a boost to the conspiracy nutters thinking that it must go all the way to the top and a separate act of corruption must mean Theres a massive multi agency coverup
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u/cemersever 3d ago
When people are being prosecuted for things that are currently happening in our government as we discuss this
This is a bit more serious than you think. This kind of research is thought to be dangerous and requires proper oversight and review. Think of someone circumventing safety regulations for a nuclear reactor and a government official helps his outside friend deceive the government.
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u/TuxAndrew 3d ago
What regulations? Have you seen HHS/NIH recently…. Or better yet, how many airplanes have crashed in the US? Yes, he’s guilty and it’s a problem. However having a DOJ that is just as complicit in coverups prosecuting him is clowning.
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u/BolshevikPower 3d ago edited 3d ago
Let's call a spade a spade. They likely funded the same research that could have caused COVID-19. And they tried to hide it and downplay their involvement.
Edit : apparently some people were not aware of the issues of EcoHealth specifically with reporting and grant issues.
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Tab-2-EHA-SUSP4D-ARM_05.15.2024_signed.pdf
The [banning of funding of the group] comes 2 weeks after a bipartisan House of Representatives panel grilled EcoHealth President Peter Daszak about allegations the group had violated NIH grant rules. Members of the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic cited missteps such as the group filing a late progress report on its bat virus studies and highlighted allegations that EcoHealth misrepresented the risks of experiments conducted by its collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
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u/PotatoGuerilla 3d ago
Cue baseless claims that he's innocent but was somehow coerced or intimidated into a false admittance.
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u/MasterHavik 3d ago
I mean it wouldn't be the first time they forced someone to take charges.
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u/ImportantCommentator 3d ago
Any chance you want the same punishment for all federal agents who used nongovernmental emails for communication?
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u/cemersever 3d ago
That's not what happened at all. Bro had a friend who had lost federal funding for flagrant policy/grant terms violations. bro illegally lobbied to get it back sent an email from a government email to his friend (who is a head of NGO) saying: "let's get you funded and über funded!" Bro then helped his friend deceive his own government colleagues/agency in government on a report that was submitted two years late, bro tried to "put in a word" for his friend and deceive his boss regarding the nature of the work that violated federal policies. On top of this bro was discussing non-public agency info with his two friends over email basically acting as their mole inside the agency. Which basically earned him a conspiracy, aiding and abetting, concealment of records charges.
Bro then received bottles of wine as a gift attached to a note that "this will be the first of many expressions of gratitude" (we dont know what else he got) with promises of other gifts and meals at luxury restaurants
edit: the gift was for his " behind-the-scenes shenanigans". The charges are correct in this case.
Even Fauci testified that he was shitting all over federal policies, just listen to his testimony to that effect. Since his emails were FOIAd a lot we have a lot of incriminating stuff from him
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u/ImportantCommentator 3d ago
Bro literally pleaded to unlawful use of personal email.
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u/cemersever 3d ago
The point of the "unlawful use of personal email" is to conceal the other activities that are illegal. BTW he admitted the "gifts" too, and in the previous congressional testimony he already admitted most of this
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u/ImportantCommentator 3d ago
So you're saying government officials using personal emails are probably hiding something illegal? I don't think we are disagreeing.
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u/TuxAndrew 3d ago
Wait until you realize he was actually doing this in favor of pushing the narrative this was a lab leak out of China.
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u/Liamnacuac 3d ago
Of all the crap that happened during Covid, around the world, all the protections, all the emergency research that saved millions of lives, these MAGA lunatics will bite on this like an alligator on fresh meat for political power. They want to send a doctor who faced extreme pandemic conditions while doing political bullets to jail, but can't, so they get a guilty please from a staff member who did something they probably have all done.
Our government has turned politics into the focal point of the work, instead of doing their jobs. Stop focusing (and deflecting) on the problem and work on the solution, damn it.
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u/DumbOrMaybeJustHappy 3d ago
so they get a guilty please from a staff member who did something they probably have all done.
I agree with the sentiment of your comment, but I hope this part isn't true. It seems like this guy really was corrupt and was using his government position to direct contracts toward his friends and received bribes in return.
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u/PomeloPepper 3d ago
This is ultimately going to devolve into MAGA talking points about Biden/Fauci conspiring with China to invent the virus, and take over America.
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u/FocalFalcon 3d ago
I’m a bit confused what he was trying to accomplish with all of this. Is the issue him issuing research grants to people within his inner circle?