What Has HHS Withheld On COVID-19 Vax? Sen. Ron Johnson Is About To Find Out
By Fred Lucas, The Daily Signal | December 12, 2024
A new letter from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., puts federal health agencies on notice that he plans to subpoena unredacted records withheld by the Biden administration on potential adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“It appears that even in the waning days of the Biden administration, your agencies will remain defiant in providing the public with complete information about the COVID-19 vaccines,” writes Johnson, incoming chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Select Subcommittee on Investigations, in the Dec. 5 letter shared with The Daily Signal.
“If it becomes necessary to subpoena these and other requested records in the next Congress when I become chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, I will do so,” the Wisconsin Republican adds.
Johnson’s letter went to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra; Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf; and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Mandy Cohen. (CDC and FDA are agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services.)
All three public health officials likely will be replaced shortly after President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
In 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Health requested data from officials with the CDC and FDA about adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines. Israeli health officials cited their concerns about heart conditions, myocarditis, and pericarditis in individuals who got a shot.
However, government documents released on the matter have been heavily redacted.
“As a result of your agencies’ excessive redactions and incomplete productions, the complete account of how your agencies reviewed and analyzed the concerning health information from the Israeli Ministry of Health remains unclear,” Johnson writes in his letter to the HHS, CDC, and FDA officials.
The senator requested unredacted documents regarding the Israeli officials’ concerns as well as data on the COVID-19 vaccines.
“Your agencies’ lack of transparency is unacceptable,” Johnson tells the three Biden administration officials in the letter. “The public deserves the complete truth about your agencies’ awareness of and lack of response to the glaring health risks associated with the COVID-19 vaccines.”
Johnson’s nine-page letter includes images of records and over 40 pages of enclosures demonstrating the heavily redacted documents he seeks information about.
After Republicans won a majority in the Senate in the Nov. 5 election, Johnson wrote to request that the three public health agencies produce other documents by Dec. 3. The agencies ignored his Nov. 19 request, perhaps because Johnson was still a ranking GOP member in the Democratic majority and not a chairman with the authority to compel production of records.
Spokespersons from the HHS, CDC, and FDA did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal for this story.
Johnson’s Dec. 5 letter includes a detailed timeline noting on Feb. 28, 2021, that CDC and FDA officials were notified about a request from the Israeli Ministry of Health for reports of young people contracting myocarditis after receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
On March 3, 2021, less than two months after President Joe Biden was sworn in, the Israeli Ministry of Health notified CDC again about reports of “a large number of myocarditis and pericarditis cases in young individuals.” The age range later was specified to be 16 to 30.
A memo dated March 10, 2021, from Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a member of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force, says: “The [Israeli] Ministry of Health stated they received reports of around 40 cases of this adverse event. They did not provide additional details about these cases.”
The CDC’s March 10 response to Israel’s health officials says adverse conditions were found in only an “estimated 0.7 per million doses of vaccine administered.”
But, the CDC response notes, “limitations of passive surveillance such as under-reporting, lack of a control group, [and] missing and incomplete data make it challenging to assess causation.”
By April 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Health had sent slides to the CDC and FDA, stating that “by the end of March 2021, 5.2 million Israelis received the first dose of the vaccine and 4.8 million received a second dose.”
The Israeli agency added: “The incidence of myocarditis following dose 1 was 1.1 per million, and 11.7 per million following dose 2—a 964% increase in incidence between the two.”
The Permanent Select Subcommittee on Investigations, which Johnson is expected to chair when the new Republican majority takes over Jan. 3, is part of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Any member of Congress may request documents from an executive branch agency, but only a committee or subcommittee majority has the subpoena power to compel the production of information.
Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.”
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