Anthony Fauci wrote in his private diary that the Wuhan wet market was not the source of Covid – in January 2020.
An ABC News reporter had the story years before that diary surfaced – and someone made sure it never aired.
Terry Moran just revealed the name he was given for why his investigation died the day it was supposed to go on television.
Nightline Investigation Found the Wuhan Institute of Virology Had Chinese Military Funding
Former ABC reporter Terry Moran spent months in early 2021 doing what every journalist in America should have been doing.
Molecular virologists, former Trump administration officials – he sat down with anyone willing to speak about the lab in Wuhan, China.
What he found, the Chinese government did not want Americans to see.
"We broke a little news that that lab had been funded by the Chinese military," Moran told The Fifth Column podcast, "despite the 'Bat Lady' saying no, it hadn't."
Shi Zhengli – the Chinese virologist who ran coronavirus research at Wuhan on American taxpayer dollars – had denied the military connection publicly.
Moran's investigation did not claim Covid escaped from the lab.
It laid out the evidence and let Americans draw their own conclusions.
Nightline greenlit the story and the piece was ready to air in June 2021.
Then the day-of review happened.
"It comes back to me, and it is incomprehensible," Moran said. "I had never been that angry. I'm in the booth, cursing and screaming."
ABC's lawyers went through the script. So did the standards team. Then Moran dropped the name that explained everything.
"I was told, Fauci," he said.
The script, Moran was told, went to the man who had spent over a year publicly insisting a lab origin was impossible.
"They had put so many caveats in there, and it was so legalized," Moran said. "I have never watched that story and never want to, because it wasn't mine."
Peter Daszak Used EcoHealth Alliance Money and a Secret Lancet Letter to Kill the Lab Leak Story
Peter Daszak – the EcoHealth Alliance president who funneled $600,000 in NIH grant money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – secretly organized a letter in The Lancet in February 2020 declaring the lab leak theory a "conspiracy theory."
All 27 signatories declared no conflict of interest.
Daszak had a direct financial stake in the Wuhan lab's reputation and hid it from the letter entirely.
"There was an organized campaign," Moran said on the podcast, "to get scientists to sign on and say there's no way there's a lab leak, and anybody who says it came from the lab is participating in racism or something."
ABC's standards team took that framing completely to heart.
Daszak then served as America's sole representative on the 2021 World Health Organization origins investigation in China – the one that declared a lab origin "extremely unlikely."
The man most financially exposed by the lab leak theory was handed the microphone to rule it out.
Emails obtained through Freedom of Information requests confirmed Daszak orchestrated the Lancet letter while hiding his own conflicts of interest from every co-signer.
Fauci Pleaded the Fifth 111 Times as the CIA the FBI and the DOE Confirmed COVID Lab Leak
Moran's revelation lands as Fauci faces more legal exposure than at any point in his career.
Sen. Rand Paul released Fauci's private diary, and the entries gutted the public narrative Fauci maintained for years.
In January 2020 – while publicly pointing Americans toward the wet market theory – Fauci wrote privately that "the market was not the source, it was the amplifier."
He knew what he was denying.
Fauci's diary logged regular contact with CNN's Jake Tapper, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, and ABC's own George Stephanopoulos – the same anchors whose networks helped the lab leak theory disappear in 2021.
When Senate Republicans brought Fauci in for a hearing, he pleaded the fifth 111 times.
Senate Republicans voted to hold him in contempt of Congress and sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.
The CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Energy have all since concluded the lab leak is the most likely origin of the virus.
Fauci, Daszak, and the Democrat media machine spent five years calling Americans conspiracy theorists for asking the question Moran tried to answer – while the man who privately knew the wet market story was false reviewed Moran's script and signed off on burying it.
His story ran so buried in government-approved caveats that he has never watched it and says he never will.
Anthony Fauci had Jake Tapper, George Stephanopoulos, and ABC's own standards team exactly where he needed them – and Americans paid the price.
Sources:
- Joseph A. Wulfsohn, "Ex-ABC News correspondent claims network overhauled his COVID lab leak report after sending copy to Fauci," Fox News, August 14, 2026.
- "Former ABC News Correspondent Says Network Gave Fauci Oversight On COVID Lab-Leak Reporting," The Fifth Column, August 14, 2026.
- "READ THE DIARIES: Documents unveil Fauci's thoughts on the lab-leak debate, mask doubts and testing failures," Fox News, July 2026.
- "Media pressure on Wuhan lab-linked scientist grows after he was once oft-cited voice decrying lab leak theory," Fox News, October 28, 2021.
- "Chairman Jordan Demands Dr. Fauci Appear for Transcribed Interview About Censorship Efforts During COVID-19," House Judiciary Committee, June 7, 2024.
