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Former ABC News Correspondent Terry Moran said the network censored his COVID-19 lab-leak story for “Nightline” in 2021, after Dr. Anthony Fauci reviewed it just hours before it was set to air.
In an interview last week on “The Fifth Column” podcast, Moran said it was the only time in his nearly 20-year career at ABC News that he felt the “heavy hand of censorship.”
ABC News fired Moran in June 2025 for violating its news policies after he called President Donald Trump and top White House Aide Stephen Miller “haters” on social media. After he left the network, Moran started the news outlet Real Patriotism.
On the podcast, Moran said that “Nightline” had been planning to air his segment on the origins of COVID-19 and evidence that the virus may have been created in — and leaked from — a lab.
He said he pitched the idea to “Nightline” in early 2021 after people he thought were “smart and serious” argued the virus likely came from a lab.
The segment contained interviews with molecular biologists and former Trump administration officials. It also “broke a little news” based on information from sources in the “three-letter agencies” who said the Chinese military had funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the lab that was researching coronaviruses.
“At the end of the day,” Moran said he thought the virus probably had a natural origin. However, he didn’t share that conclusion in the “Nightline” piece.
The segment was ready to air and went for review. When Moran got the edited script back, he said it was “incomprehensible,” adding, “I’d never been angrier.”
Moran said the script was reviewed by “lawyers’ standards, and — I was told — Fauci.”
Racism accusations ‘really silenced’ ABC News
He said he was so angry he was “cursing and screaming,” and that he never watched the aired segment afterward because he considered it unrecognizable from what he had produced.
Moran said he didn’t have firsthand knowledge that the script had been sent to Fauci, but “that’s what I was told.”
“Fifth Column” co-host Michael Moynihan asked whether merely raising the idea the virus had come from a lab was dangerous.
Moran replied:
“Well, if you know the whole story, right? There was an organized campaign by one of the guys who was funding the research … what was his name, [Peter] Daszak or whatever, to get scientists to sign on and say, ‘There’s no way there’s a lab leak,’ and anybody who says that this came from the lab is, you know, participating in racism or something.”
He said the racism accusations “really silenced” the news agency.
Moran said he thought the piece would hold up today until there is better evidence that the virus had a natural origin. He also said it wouldn’t surprise him if the virus came from a lab. “But I don’t like people saying that they’re absolutely certain that it’s clearly a Frankenvirus or a lab leak or whatever.”
The hosts asked Moran if he had ever said anything publicly about it before. “No, I probably shouldn’t have now,” he said.
ABC News did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.
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Moran’s account comes during congressional investigation into Fauci’s actions
Moran went public with his story just as Fauci’s role in covering up a possible lab leak has been making headlines.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress and refer him to the Justice Department for possible prosecution after he pled the Fifth Amendment 111 times in a hearing on COVID-19 origins.
Senators allege the blanket pardon former President Joe Biden granted Fauci in early 2025 made him ineligible for Fifth Amendment protections.
A Senate subcommittee investigating Fauci obtained a copy of his iPhone from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The committee has already released some of the texts, showing Fauci knew of a theoretical risk of miscarriage following the second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine during the first trimester of pregnancy.
The Trump administration is also investigating whether the authors and publisher of an influential scientific paper published early during the pandemic allowed Fauci and others to influence the paper’s conclusions in exchange for funding.
“The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published in March 2020, concluded that COVID-19 had a zoonotic, or animal, origin. It became one of that year’s most-cited papers, accessed over 6 million times. It played an important role in silencing proponents of the lab leak theory.
Related articles in The Defender
- Breaking: Senate Committee Votes to Hold Fauci in Contempt
- Congress Asked Fauci at Least 111 Questions — Fauci Refused to Answer at Least 111 Times
- CIA Whistleblower: Fauci Led Multi-Agency Cover-Up of COVID Lab Leak Evidence
- Fauci Raised COVID Vaccine Miscarriage Risk, Texts Reveal
- Trump Administration Investigating Publisher of COVID Origins Paper for Corruption, Citing Influence by Fauci
- ‘Unemployed and Now Poor’: Peter Daszak Sues EcoHealth Alliance After Board Fires Him
