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U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), a nonprofit investigative public health group, on Monday sued the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) — a semi-autonomous agency within the DOE — for failing to respond to requests for key records related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The DOE — which oversees a network of 17 U.S. laboratories, including advanced biology laboratories — on Feb. 26 released an updated report concluding COVID-19 most likely originated from a research-related laboratory incident in China.
.@NYTimes now promoting my “dangerous conspiracy theory” that covid originated in Chinese lab.https://t.co/BP6siLWxDa
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 27, 2023
Two days later, USRTK filed a request with the DOE and the NNSA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) asking that key documents related to the agency’s report be released to the public, the group said.
Both agencies violated FOIA provisions by failing to respond to the group’s Feb. 28 request, according to USRTK, which alleged in its complaint:
“Although Defendants have each acknowledged Plaintiff’s request, they have entirely failed in any way to act on such request and have failed to issue a timely or lawful ‘determination’ regarding the request.”
USRTK said the records it seeks are “of great public interest” and “central to a matter of timely, current political and legal deliberations.”
The failure by DOE and NNSA to respond “in any meaningful way … despite the passage of approximately two months” to USRTK’s request left the group “no choice” but to sue the agencies, the group said.
USRTK asked the court to “compel” the agencies to “search for and release records” related to the group’s Feb. 28 FOIA request, and “provide an index of any claimed exempt material for purposes of further judicial review.”
The new lawsuit, filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, is part of USRTK’s ongoing efforts to uncover what is known about the origins of COVID-19 and the risks of gain-of-function research which aims to “augment the infectivity or lethality of potential pandemic pathogens.”
The group has filed more than 90 state, federal and international public records requests seeking information about the “origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the risks of biosafety labs and gain-of-function research.”
A Senate report released on April 18 concluded COVID-19 likely resulted from an accidental leak at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
Last month Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said he had “no doubt” the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research that likely resulted in the creation of COVID-19 and its subsequent leak.
Redfield made the statement during the first formal hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
And FBI Director Christopher Wray on March 1 confirmed that the FBI has long believed COVID-19 originated at a Chinese government lab.
