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FIRST ON FOX: A government watchdog group is demanding information about the actions of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci in the early days of the pandemic.
Judicial Watch has filed a complaint after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) went unacknowledged. The group is demanding the calendar entries made by Fauci, who also serves as the chief medical adviser to President Biden.
The original FOIA request demanded “all calendars or calendar entries for Dr. Anthony Fauci, including calendars maintained on Dr. Fauci’s behalf. For calendars or calendar entries created electronically, the records should include the names of invitees, notes, and other attachments for a given entry.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci is pictured in a Washington Nationals face mask.
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“On Nov. 5, 2021, Plaintiffs submitted a FOIA request to the National Institutes of Health, a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, via the National Institutes of Health electronic submission system, seeking access to [Fauci’s calendars,]” attorney Paul Orfanedes wrote in the complaint.
HHS failed to satisfy the request by the given deadline of Dec. 13, 2021, Judicial Watch claims. Both Judicial Watch and fellow watchdog group OpentheBooks.com were named as plaintiffs.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, in Washington on Oct. 20, 2015. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The department was asked to provide the relevant materials from Nov. 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020, but has reportedly failed to take action on the request.
“Fauci wields enormous power and the American people have a right to know what he has been up to,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement to Fox News Digital.
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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Dr. Anthony Fauci got into a heated exchange marked with personal attacks during a Tuesday hearing dealing with the response to COVID-19 variants.
Paul, a fierce critic of the NIAID director, accused Fauci of playing a role in smearing doctors from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford who had positions different from his own.
Sen. Rand Paul clashed with Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Jan. 11, 2022, in Washington. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
“In an email exchange with Dr. [Francis] Collins, you conspire, and I quote here directly from the email, to ‘create a quick and devastating published takedown’ of three prominent epidemiologists from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford,” Paul said, referring to the recently retired National Institutes of Health (NIH) director.
Fauci’s initial response was that the email was from Collins to him, not the other way around, but Paul noted that Fauci responded to it with agreement.
The NIAID director accused Paul of “distorting everything about me,” which he said is Paul’s “usual fashion.”
