Two lawsuits seeking documents from the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the origin of the COVID-19 virus have been filed.
Judicial Watch announced the lawsuits Thursday, saying they were filed after document requests under the Freedom of Information Act had been ignored.
The lawsuits are seeking all documents held by intelligence agencies and cables from the State Department since 2017 on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, increasingly suspected as being a virus origin point.
The group also wants documents related to intelligence on the virus origin.
President Biden recently ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day investigation into the virus origin after an earlier inquiry resulted in several agencies deadlocked over whether virus pandemic broke out naturally or was the result of a laboratory mishap.
“We don’t trust either the Biden administration or the Deep State to voluntarily come clean on COVID and its possible connections to the Wuhan Institute,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement.
“Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuits could be the key to unraveling the truth about COVID and the Wuhan Institute.”
Judicial Watch recently obtained emails under FOIA that link Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration’s pandemic point man, to U.S. funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In April, the ODNI issued a statement saying that the entire American intelligence community was “consistently providing critical support to U.S. policymakers and those responding to the COVID-19 virus, which originated in China.”
Last year, then-White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said in an interview that U.S. spy agencies were slow to understand the COVID outbreak and in the early days were dismissing the danger of its spread, seeing it as a disease similar to the flu.
Rep. Devin Nunes of California, ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on intelligence, also is seeking answers from intelligence agencies on whether the agencies failed to respond properly to the pandemic.
Emails obtained by the legal group last week included Department of Health and Human Services records showing that between 2014 and 2019 the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Fauci gave the Wuhan Institute of Virology $826,277 for bat-coronavirus research.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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