the theorist

David Morens, a senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health, pleaded guilty this week to conspiring to evade federal public records laws. (I am not making this up.) He admitted, in a federal courtroom, to a criminal conspiracy. The official, documented, federal-court description of what he did is: conspiring.

What makes this worth noting is the word.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Fauci appeared frequently on television to address the people who were raising questions about his office — regarding masks, the origins of the virus, and the handling of public records, among other things. He described these people as conspiracy theorists. The implication, which most people understood without needing it spelled out, was that the theories in question were not real. There was no conspiracy. The theorists were theorizing about something that was not there.

David Morens, his senior adviser, was conspiring. This is now in the federal record.

To be precise about what Morens admitted to: he worked with colleagues to evade the Freedom of Information Act, which is the law that allows members of the public to request government documents. People request government documents because they want to know what the government is doing. The reason Morens and colleagues needed to evade this law is that they did not want the public to know what they were doing. The mechanism they used was a conspiracy. The plea says so.

It is important to be clear about what this does not mean. This does not mean that every theory about every other thing was correct. Conspiracies are specific. Morens conspired to evade public records laws at a federal health agency during a pandemic. That is the conspiracy on record. Other theories about other topics remain theories, which is a word that is now doing a lot of heavy lifting.

What it does mean is that there was, in fact, a conspiracy. In the specific building. Conducted by people in Dr. Fauci's office, one of whom worked for Dr. Fauci directly. Against a law designed specifically to let the public see what that office was doing. During the years when people asking to see what the office was doing were described as conspiracy theorists.

Dr. Fauci has not been charged with anything. He has retired. His former senior adviser has pleaded guilty to conspiring against the public records system that would have made his office's work available to inspection.

What remains available for inspection is the record — which, due to the conspiracy, is missing some documents. What those documents contained is not known. The person who helped make sure they would not be found is, as of this week, a convicted conspirator.

The theories, presumably, continue.