U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit investigative public health group, has filed numerous lawsuits against federal agencies for violating provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The lawsuits are part of our efforts to uncover what is known about the origins of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, leaks or mishaps at biosafety labs, and the risks of gain-of-function research that seeks to augment the infectivity or lethality of potential pandemic pathogens.

We have filed more than 150 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.

Read more about our findings so far, why we are conducting this investigation, recommended readings and documents we have obtained.

FOI lawsuits filed

(1) National Archives and Records Administration: On October 1, 2024, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the NARA for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks records related to NARA’s investigation into NIAID Senior Scientific Advisor Dr. David Morens’s apparent attempt to evade the Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act, and his stated intent to destroy federal records. We are requesting records including – but not limited to – reports or Federal Records Act notifications of deleted records, email or written correspondence with the NIH or NIAID regarding any investigation of Dr. Morens, and, records prepared or sent by NIH in response to NARA’s case on unauthorized disposition of federal records initiated in July 2023. Case 1:24-cv-02787.

(2) National Institutes of Health: On October 1, 2024, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the NIH for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks communications regarding gain-of-function research sent to or from Erik Stemmy, the NIH program officer in charge EcoHealth Alliance’s grants. Disclosure of these emails may shed more light on EcoHealth Alliance’s influence on the NIH’s oversight language governing gain-of-function research in 2016, as well as other deliberations and influences concerning rules overseeing GOF research. Case 1:24-cv-02785-JEB.

(3) Defense Intelligence Agency: On April 5, 2024, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the Defense Intelligence Agency for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks records relating to National Center for Medical Intelligence working papers and analyses of the origins of COVID-19, which were described in an article by Sharri Markson in The Australian. Case 1:24-cv-00982.

(4) U.S. Department of State: On November 14, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks records relating to the State Department’s knowledge of and investigation of the origins of COVID-19, including: (1) a specifically identified memorandum of conversation (memcon) between Christopher Ford, former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, and Stephen Biegun, former Deputy Secretary of State; (2) communications between Biegun and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Case 1:23-cv-03412. 

(5) Defense Intelligence Agency: On November 10, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seeks reports and records of communication that could show DIA’s knowledge of the early circumstances surrounding COVID-19 in its epicenter, Wuhan, China. Specifically, we requested records related to findings by the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a component of the DIA responsible for medical and health intelligence. Case 1:23-cv-01528.

(6) Office of the Director of National Intelligence: On August 10, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the ODNI for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seeks records declassified under the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, including records: (1) showing activities performed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology with or on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army; (2) referring to coronavirus research (non-COVID-19) or related activities performed at the WIV; (3) referring to researchers at the WIV who fell ill in autumn 2019; and, (4) relating to potential links between the WIV and the origin of COVID-19. Case 1:23-cv-01055.

(7) National Institutes of Health: On June 19, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the NIH for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, seeks two specific emails sent in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic between NIH officials including former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci. Portions of these emails were redacted in previous releases. Disclosure of these emails may shed light on what the NIH knew about the origins of the pandemic, as well as its response to such information. Case 8:23-cv-01635-DKC.

(8) Federal Bureau of Investigation: On June 18, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks documents supporting or underpinning or providing evidence for a statement within the report “Intelligence Community Assessment on COVID-19 Origins,” released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on October 29, 2021, that one Intelligence Community element “assesses with moderate confidence that COVID-19 most likely resulted from a laboratory-associated incident involving WIV or other researchers—either through exposure to the virus during experiments or through sampling. Case 1:23-cv-01768.

(9) Federal Bureau of Investigation: On June 18, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks documents supporting or underpinning or providing evidence for statements made by FBI Director Christopher Wray on February 28, 2023 about the possible lab origin of Covid-19, particularly that “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan” and that the Chinese government “has been doing its best to try and thwart and obfuscate the work […] that we’re doing.” Case 1:23-cv-01769.

(10) National Institutes of Health: On June 15, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the NIH for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, encompasses two FOIA requests. The first FOIA request, filed on November 5, 2021, seeks communications between four key NIH employees and researchers working with pathogens of pandemic potential. The second request, filed on January 21, 2022, seeks communications between one key NIH employee and EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. These requests aim to uncover the extent of NIH’s communications with, and oversight of, high-risk pathogen research conducted under its funding programs. Case 4:23-cv-02954-KAW.

(11) Department of Defense, Uniformed University of the Health Sciences: On June 15, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense (DoD) Uniformed University of the Health Sciences (USU) for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, seeks the records of communications of two employees of DoD’s USU, who are connected with the U.S. government’s research on the pandemic potential of bat-associated pathogens of security concern. Both researchers have been working on bat virus pathogens in collaboration with EcoHealth Alliance, Colorado State University, NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory, and others, and one of them visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We filed the request on January 11, 2021. Two years and four months since then, despite our follow-ups and request to provide an official “determination” on our request, we have received no further communication from DoD or USU about the request. Case 3:23-cv-02956-TSH.

(12) Defense Intelligence Agency: On June 14, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the Defense Intelligence Agency for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, seeks a copy of one specifically identified agency record: “China: Origins of the COVID-19 Outbreak Remain Unknown,” dated March 27, 2020. We filed the request on August 17, 2020. Despite extensive follow-ups and three formal requests to provide an official “determination” on our request, we have received no determination or estimated date of completion on our request. The last estimated date of completion DIA provided was September 30, 2021. We have received no records. Case 3:23-cv-02936.

(13) Department of Energy: On April 24, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, seeks unclassified intelligence findings or briefings by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)’s Intelligence Programs related to the origin of Covid-19, as well as key DOE employee communications on the topic. Our request aims to uncover the evidence underpinning the DOE’s assessment that the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from a research-related incident in China. Case 1:23-cv-00343.

(14) Defense Threat Reduction Agency: On January 25, 2023, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the DTRA for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, encompasses two FOIA requests. The first FOIA request, filed on November 16, 2022, seeks all records pertaining to any DTRA investigations or reviews of the EcoHealth Alliance or its work. The second request, filed on December 19, 2022, seeks records of specific DTRA employees that contain the keyword “EcoHealth”. These requests aim to uncover if the DTRA discovered or was informed of any negligence or misconduct by the EcoHealth Alliance, which partnered with and funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Case 1:23-cv-00111.

(15) Department of Health and Human Services and National Library of Medicine: On November 22, 2022, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Library of Medicine for violating the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. It’s common practice for researchers to compare potentially new genetic sequences to a database of known sequences using BLAST to determine if their sequence is novel or related to known sequences. We sent a FOIA to the NIH to ask if any BLAST query inputs made before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic matched portions of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Our request focuses on the RdRp and spike genes since these genes may have a greater chance of being sequenced. The RdRp gene is often used to identify the presence of coronaviruses, and for many coronaviruses only partial RdRp sequences are known. The spike gene is of great research interest due to the role it plays in pathogenesis and viral transmission. If someone was looking for a sequence that matches SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic began, then that would suggest that a lab may have possessed a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2, or a highly-similar relative. We sent our FOIA on June 1, 2022. On June 9th, the NLM replied that it has “no responsive records.” On June 15th, we appealed and asked some questions. We did not receive a response. Case 1:22-cv-03555.

(16) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: On November 22, 2022, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for violating the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. This suit encompasses two FOIA requests. The first FOIA request, filed on October 2, 2020, asks for records pertaining to funding contracts, grant agreements, and communications about funds that DARPA provided to Duke University in 2017 as part of DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform program. The second FOIA request, filed on March 1, 2021, asks for contracts, grants, and communications about funding, pertaining to eight contracts funded under DARPA’s program titled “Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats”, or PREEMPT. Case 3:22-cv-07377-TSH.

(17) Department of Health and Human Services and National Library of Medicine: On November 21, 2022, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Library of Medicine for violating the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Early genomic sequences of SARS-CoV-2, as well as sequences of highly-related SARS-like coronaviruses, are crucial to understanding the origins of Covid-19. It has become apparent that NIH (NLM/NCBI) may have such sequences that aren’t publicly available. In 2021, Jesse Bloom found early SARS-CoV-2 sequences that had been deleted from the NIH’s Sequence Read Archive (SRA) at the submitter’s request. An email in 2021 revealed that eight SARS-CoV-2 submission packages had been deleted. In July 2022, NCBI released 163 spike protein sequences from SARS-like coronaviruses, and then removed them from public view 10 days later. For these reasons, we submitted a FOIA on August 22, 2022 asking the NIH to release all early SARS-CoV-2 sequences, as well as all full and partial SARS-like coronavirus sequences that are in its databases but that have been withheld from public view. Case 1:22-cv-03545-ABJ.

(18) Department of State: On July 28, 2022, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State for violating the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, seeks records for two FOIA requests, filed on January 27, 2021 and June 8, 2021. The FOIA requests to State are for evidence underpinning the 15 January 2021 State “Fact Sheet: Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, ” and press statement by then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, “Ensuring a transparent, thorough investigation of COVID-19’s origin,” as well as emails about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Mojiang, RaTG13 and other matters related to the origins of Covid-19. Case 3:22-cv-04359-KAW.

(19) Department of Health and Human Services: On July 27, 2022, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for violating the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, seeks records for two FOIA requests, filed on July 14, 2020 and March 8, 2021. The FOIA requests to HHS are for communications with the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the EcoHealth Alliance, or about the origins of Covid-19. Case 3:22-cv-04328-TSH.

(20) Department of State: On April 25, 2022, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State for violating provisions of FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks documents and correspondence of State employees, including C.S. Eliot Kang, Ann Ganzer, David Feith, Bruce Turner, Robert Wood and Laura Gross, related to a State Dept. investigation of the origins of Covid-19, EcoHealth Alliance, gain-of-function research, dual use research of concern, the Global Virome Project, and other matters. Case 1:22-cv-01130-JMC.

(21) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: On April 18, 2022, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for violating the provisions of the North Carolina Public Records Act. The lawsuit, filed in North Carolina District Court in Orange County, seeks records for seven public records requests to the University of North Carolina, including: (1) emails between Prof. Ralph Baric, former Prof. Lishan Su or Ms. Toni Baric with the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention or the EcoHealth Alliance, or others; (2) emails to or from Prof. Ralph Baric containing any of the search terms “DEFUSE” or “DARPA” or “DTRA”. UNC filed its reply brief on March 9, 2023. Case 22CV463.

(22) Defense Threat Reduction Agency: On January 14, 2022, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the DTRA for violating provisions of the FOIA.The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks: (1) finished intelligence, documents and reports about accidents, containment failures or deliberate release of biological agents from facilities in 21 countries around the world; (2) assessments of risks, hazards and efficacy of BSL-2, BSL-3 and BSL-4 containment schemes (including flaws, failings or weaknesses) in those same 21 countries; and, (3) grant proposals and other documents from the EcoHealth Alliance and Metabiota. Case 3:22-cv-00299-JCS.

(23) National Institutes of Health: On November 8, 2021, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the NIH for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit (amended complaint filed 2/10/22), filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, seeks records for nine FOIA requests to NIH regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and communications between the NIH and EcoHealth Alliance or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The records requests also included EcoHealth Alliance grant applications, scientific reviews, funding agreements, and correspondence with Dr. Erik Stemmy, NIAID (NIH) project officer, as well as documents regarding NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML), the DARPA-funded Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) Program, and communication between the NIH and the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning the origins of COVID-19. This is our second FOIA lawsuit against NIH related to the origins of COVID-19. Case 1:21-cv-02936-TSC.

(24) Agency for International Development (USAID): On October 14, 2021, USRTK filed a lawsuit against USAID for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks records related to USAID funding and oversight of EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), which was a lead consortium partner in USAID-funded projects in the Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) program. Initiated in 2009, USAID’s EPT PREDICT programs funded collaborations between EHA and researchers at University of California, Davis; Wuhan Institute of Virology; Metabiota, Inc.; and others, to study the pandemic potential of infectious diseases including bat-associated coronaviruses. Case 3:21-cv-08058-SK.

(25) Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): On October 14, 2021, USRTK filed a lawsuit against HHS for violating provisions of the FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks correspondence between senior HHS employees, including Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response, with the World Health Organization’s director general’s office, and others, related to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Case 3:21-cv-08056-TSH.

(26) University of Maryland: On October 6, 2021, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the University of Maryland for violating provisions of the Maryland Public Information Act. The lawsuit, filed in Maryland Circuit Court for Prince George’s County, seeks correspondence and documents of Professor Rita R. Colwell, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, relevant to the origins of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Colwell serves on the board of directors of the EcoHealth Alliance, which funded and conducted research with bat coronaviruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and others. On June 10, 2022, Maryland Judge John P. Davey denied the University of Maryland’s motion for partial summary judgment. On October 6, 2022, Judge Davey ordered that our lawyers may have access to the records in the case to make arguments about whether they should be made public. On April 24, 2023, Judge Ademiluyi issued her decision on motions for summary judgment. Case CAL21-11730.

(27) Food and Drug Administration: On Feb. 4, 2021, USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for violating provisions of FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks documents and correspondence with or about China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the EcoHealth Alliance, which partnered with and funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology, among other subjects. Case 21-cv-00884-KAW.

(28) Department of Education: On Dec. 17, 2020 USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education for violating provisions of FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks documents that the Education Department requested from the University of Texas’ Medical Branch at Galveston about its funding agreements and scientific and/or research cooperation with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Case 3:20-cv-09117-DMR.

(29) Department of State: On Nov. 30, 2020 USRTK filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State for violating provisions of FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks documents and correspondence with or about China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the EcoHealth Alliance, which partnered with and funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology, among other subjects. See news release. Case 3:20-cv-08415-JCS.

(30) National Institutes of Health: On Nov. 5, 2020 USRTK filed a lawsuitagainst National Institutes of Health (NIH) for violating provisions of FOIA. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks correspondence with or about organizations such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the EcoHealth Alliance, which partnered with and funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology. See news release. Case 1:20-cv-03196-CKK.