This is the fifth in an eight-article series on “Restoring Trust in Public Health: Lessons from COVID-19.” Four years of the Biden-Harris administration has left Americans rightly skeptical of public health institutions. This series highlights key findings from several congressional oversight reports, including the final report of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and offers lessons for Congress and the new administration on ways to restore trust in public health.
During the Biden-Harris administration, Americans witnessed the executive branch’s unprecedented stonewalling of Congress and the American people, denying lawmakers’ legitimate requests for crucial information on federal COVID-19 policies and data. Without such information, Congress could not make fully informed decisions when deciding how best to combat the pandemic and all of its fallout.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., for one, reported that more than 70 of his letters to federal officials over the past four years on COVID-19 related issues were either “ignored or inadequately addressed.”
Beyond ignoring, delaying, or denying congressional requests for information, federal public health officials also resorted to various “tricks” to conceal vital information from the public. They deliberately shirked their responsibilities to provide Americans access to information that should have been made available to them under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.
House and Senate oversight of federal agencies is elemental to Congress’ responsibility under Article I of the Constitution. Thus, federal agency subversion of congressional access to vital information is nothing less than a subversion of the Constitution itself.
Our elected representatives sought information from the Biden-Harris administration on a variety of pandemic-related issues. In many cases, administration officials refused to comply; delayed delivering relevant information; redacted documents, making them unreadable; or simply ignored the requests. Examples are numerous. But consider just four egregious cases.
Johnson noted that previously, Walensky received Pfizer reports in 2021 concerning these adverse events and the agency drafted a “Health Alert Network” message to warn the public about the risk of myocarditis. However, that alert was never issued. When Johnson finally received copies of the Pfizer and White House documents, they were heavily—and in one case, completely—redacted.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic detailed in its final report the efforts of federal officials to violate the Freedom of Information Act and hide information from the public that it has a right to see. Concerning the origins of COVID-19, for example, the subcommittee “ … discovered documents suggesting senior officials in Dr. [Anthony] Fauci’s office flagrantly used deceptive tactics to prevent their emails and correspondences from being discovered as responsive to FOIA requests.”
The report cites, for example, the use of “Ec-Health” for EcoHealth (the research firm that contracted with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology), “anders$n” for Anderson (Kristian Andersen, a top virologist), and “g#in-of-function” for gain-of-function (research designed to enhance the transmissibility and virulence of pathogens such as the coronavirus).
On Feb. 25, 2021, Dr. David Morens, a scientific adviser to Fauci, claimed in an email that he learned “tricks” to evade FOIA requests from the agency’s FOIA officer, Margaret Moore, who, he said, “hates” the FOIA law. Morens also used personal emails to communicate with colleagues and others, rather than his government email, to avoid the FOIA law and hide information from the public.
Many of these details were revealed during Morens’ testimony before the Select Committee. Moore refused to testify about her activities related to FOIA. After the subcommittee issued a subpoena, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
New Trump administration HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised senators at his confirmation hearing that “if Congress asks me for information, you will get it immediately.”
On Jan. 28, Johnson, now chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, issued a subpoena for a comprehensive list of HHS documents relating to the COVID-19 response, including an estimated 50 pages or more of Fauci’s withheld emails as well as unredacted records on vaccine development and adverse events. Expect much more to come.
Working with Congress, the new administration can go a long way to restoring trust in America’s public health agencies by providing vital and timely information on agency decisions and operations to Congress and the American people. Such cooperation is the way a representative government should work and will help to ensure that lawmakers have the best available information with which to make sometimes life-or-death decisions when they are called upon to address critical public health needs.