Judicial Watch Sues Defense Dept for Gain-of-Function Records Predating Covid-19

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense for records on funding proposals submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Biological Technologies Office prior to the Covid-19 outbreak (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:26-cv-00433)).

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a component of the Defense (War) Department, failed to respond to a November 7, 2025, FOIA request for:

All biodefense and gain-of-function (GoF) funding proposals submitted to the DARPA Biological Technologies Office (BTO) prior to December 2019.

The Biological Technologies Office was launched in 2014 with DARPA, claiming the office’s programs “push the leading edge of science” and “will sometimes be society’s first encounter with the ethical, legal, or social dilemmas that can be raised by new biological technologies.”

https://www.judicialwatch.org/gain-of-function-records/?utm_content=

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