Rep. Gregory Steube (R-Fla.) and other U.S. lawmakers are asserting that the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) refusal to provide records to The Epoch Times is illegal.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) states that, with exceptions, agencies that receive satisfactory records requests “shall make the records promptly available” to the requester. But the FDA recently refused to provide results of COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring analysis to The Epoch Times, claiming that it could not separate the results from inter-agency and intra-agency communications, which are allowed to be withheld.
Steube and colleagues told FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, a Biden appointee, that they were concerned after reading the story about the refusal to provide the records, telling Califf that his agency “is obligated to disclose” the materials under FOIA….