Judicial Watch Sues Defense Dept for Gain-of-Function Records Predating Covid-19

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense for records on funding proposals submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Biological Technologies Office prior to the Covid-19 outbreak (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:26-cv-00433)).

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a component of the Defense (War) Department, failed to respond to a November 7, 2025, FOIA request for:

All biodefense and gain-of-function (GoF) funding proposals submitted to the DARPA Biological Technologies Office (BTO) prior to December 2019.

The Biological Technologies Office was launched in 2014 with DARPA, claiming the office’s programs “push the leading edge of science” and “will sometimes be society’s first encounter with the ethical, legal, or social dilemmas that can be raised by new biological technologies.”

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in April 2024 announced that it sent letters to several agencies requesting:

[I]nformation on their knowledge and involvement regarding the DEFUSE project, a 2018 grant proposal led by EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The DEFUSE project was submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the PREventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) program and proposed to insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus to create a novel chimeric virus that would have been shockingly similar to the COVID-19 virus.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), then the ranking member of the committee wrote: “[A]t least 15 federal agencies knew from the beginning of the pandemic that EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were seeking federal funding in 2018 to create a virus genetically very similar if not identical to COVID-19.” 

“Gain-of-function proposals likely were active in the Defense Department’s pipeline prior to the pandemic,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Our lawsuit intends to find out what these proposals entailed.” 

Judicial Watch is the national leader in exposing key information about fraud, abuse, and government secrets about Covid-19:

• In June 2025, Judicial Watch sued the War Department for all records regarding U.S. military personnel possibly contracting Covid-19 in October 2019 during the World Military Games in Wuhan, China. The lawsuit cites a December 2022 report issued by the Pentagon titled “Report to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and House of Representatives: 2019 World Military Games” which states that seven “service members who attended the games exhibited COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms” during the time surrounding their attendance at the games.
• In May 2025, Judicial Watch received records from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that revealed its plans to mandate Covid-19 vaccinations for 17 million health care employees and that only one of 4,682 claims for injuries and deaths due to Covid-19 “countermeasures” at the time was compensated.
• Records uncovered in 2024 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) through a FOIA request showed an April 2020 email exchange with several officials in the bureau’s Newark Field Office referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China as including “gain-of-function research” which “would leave no signature of purposeful human manipulation.”
• Records from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed that a Pfizer study surveyed 23 people in 2021 to gauge reactions to its Covid vaccine booster before asking the FDA to approve it.
• Records from the Health and Human Services included the initial grant application and annual reports to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from EcoHealth Alliance, describing the aim of its work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to create mutant viruses “to better predict the capacity of our CoVs [coronaviruses] to infect people.”
• Health and Human Services records included emails of then-Director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins showing a British physicians’ group recommended the use of Ivermectin to prevent and treat Covid-19.
• Records from Health and Human Services regarding data Moderna submitted to the Food and Drug Administration on its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine indicated a “statistically significant” number of rats were born with skeletal deformations after their mothers were injected with the vaccine. The documents also revealed Moderna elected not to conduct a number of standard pharmacological studies on the laboratory test animals.
• Food and Drug Administration records detailed pressure for Covid-19 vaccine booster approval and use.
• NIH records revealed an FBI “inquiry” into the NIH’s controversial bat coronavirus grant tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The records also show National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) officials were concerned about “gain-of-function” research in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2016. The Fauci agency was also concerned about EcoHealth Alliance’s lack of compliance with reporting rules and use of gain-of-function research in the NIH-funded research involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.
• HHS records revealed that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID.
• NIAID records showed that it gave nine China-related grants to EcoHealth Alliance to research coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants to the Wuhan lab itself. The records also included an email from the vice director of the Wuhan Lab asking an NIH official for help finding disinfectants for decontamination of airtight suits and indoor surfaces.
• HHS records included an “urgent for Dr. Fauci ” email chain, citing ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded EcoHealth Alliance. The government emails also reported that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates worked closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help “raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from China on important international counsels as high level commitment from China.”
• HHS records included a grant application for research involving the coronavirus that appeared to describe “gain-of-function” research involving RNA extractions from bats, experiments on viruses, attempts to develop a chimeric virus and efforts to genetically manipulate the full-length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone.
• HHS records showed the State Department and NIAID knew immediately in January 2020 that China was withholding COVID data, which was hindering risk assessment and response by public health officials.
• University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) records showed the former director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Dr. James W. Le Duc warned Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology of potential investigations into the Covid issue by Congress.
• HHS records regarding biodistribution studies and related data for the Covid-19 vaccines showed a key component of the vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), were found outside the injection site, mainly the liver, adrenal glands, spleen and ovaries of test animals, eight to 48 hours after injection.
• Records from the Federal Select Agent Program (FSAP) revealed safety lapses and violations at U.S. biosafety laboratories that conduct research on dangerous agents and toxins.
• HHS records included emails between National Institutes of Health (NIH) then-Director Francis Collins and Fauci, the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), about hydroxychloroquine and Covid-19.
• HHS records showed that NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” Covid-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020.
• Fauci emails included his approval of a press release supportive of China’s response to the 2019 novel coronavirus.
• Judicial Watch’s four-part documentary regarding the coordinated effort by the government and Big Tech to censor and suppress information on topics such as Hunter Biden’s laptop, Covid-19, and election debates is available here.

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