NIH Beats Claim It Withheld Information on Covid-19’s Origins

The National Institutes of Health was entitled to pretrial judgment in a case alleging it inadequately responded to a whistleblower’s request for information about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, a federal appeals court said.

The agency didn’t violate the Freedom of Information Act by allegedly conducting inadequate records searches or withholding responsive documents, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said Tuesday, affirming a lower court grant of summary judgment. The statute didn’t give the whistleblower a private cause of action to sue the agency for missing a deadline to decide if it would repsond to the ...