Aug. 19 (UPI) — David Morens, a former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases employee, pleaded guilty to taking part in a scheme to hide federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Morens made his guilty plea on Tuesday in federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and defraud the United States. The charges stem from his alleged involvement in a scheme to evade Freedom of Information Act requests and the Federal Records Act by hiding federal records.

Morens is one of three people alleged to be part of the scheme. He faces up to five years in prison.

The person referred to as “co-conspirator 1” by the Justice Department was a CEO of a New York-based nonprofit that received the “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” grant in 2014. That grant is a key part of the indictment as its termination precipitated the alleged scheme.

Co-conspirator 1 created a subaward with the grant and awarded it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan China, which has been the subject of theories that the COVID-19 virus leaked from the lab, sparking the pandemic.

The Justice Department said that Morens and two co-conspirators carried out the scheme after one of the co-conspirators’ National Institute of Health grant was terminated. The three people involved planned the scheme to restore the terminated grant.

In his guilty plea, Morens admitted that he hid emails that related to the pandemic in a personal account to avoid them being publicly released, circumventing public records laws. He had previously explained that he did this to stop the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and to protect Dr. Anthony Fauci from receiving threats.

Fauci has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to the case.

Morens served as a senior adviser at NIAID’s Office of the Director between 2006 and 2022. The Justice Department indicted him in April on five counts related to the plan to hide federal records from the public.