fox files

In March 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a prominent member of the president’s coronavirus task force, praised the work of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its chairman, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Fauci said: “Tedros is really an outstanding person … I mean, obviously, over the years anyone who says that the WHO has not had problems has not been watching the WHO. But I think under his leadership they’ve done very well.”

In April, however, President Trump announced a halt to U.S. funding of WHO. According to the president, the WHO put “political correctness over lifesaving measures.” Additionally, President Trump said: “The WHO failed in this duty, and must be held accountable,” adding that the WHO ignored “credible information” in December 2019 that the virus could be transmitted from human to human.

We want to have a closer look at the Fauci/WHO connection, so we have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation (DNCF) against the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for communications and other records of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Deputy Director H. Clifford Lane with and about WHO concerning the novel coronavirus (Daily Caller News Foundation v. U.S. Department Justice (No. 1:20-cv-01149)).

We sued after HHS failed to respond to our April 1, 2020, FOIA request seeking:

We are requesting communications from January 1, 2020, to April 1, 2020. The DCNF was granted expedited processing of its request.

“This virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people and turned the whole world upside down,” Daily Caller News Foundation Co-Founder and President Neil Patel said. “We know that China and WHO could have done a lot more to prevent or reduce this catastrophe. We therefore have a legitimate and urgent news purpose for seeking these documents regarding U.S. officials’ communications with WHO and demand that the agencies in question stop stalling and start following the law that entitles us to this vital information.”

It is urgent that the NIH follow transparency law during the coronavirus crisis. It is of significant public interest to learn what WHO was telling our top medical officials about the coronavirus that originated in China.