FOIAengine: HHS Designee Is Target After Calling FDA “Corrupt”
Freedom of Information Act requests from the news media about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hit the Food and Drug Administration almost immediately after President-elect Trump announced his choice of Kennedy to lead the sprawling Department of Health and Human Services.
Notably, Trump’s choices of leaders for agencies that would report up to Kennedy – the FDA, the Public Health Service, and the Centers for Disease Control – haven’t turned up in FOIA requests to the FDA.
The earliest media requests about Kennedy came from the Wall Street Journal, NBC News, CNN, Al Jazeera English Online, and Lever News. All were filed with the FDA and showed up in PoliScio Analytics’ competitive-intelligence database FOIAengine, which tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows.
Because it’s still early days for the Trump transition and most of the agencies we track in FOIAengine haven’t yet filed their November logs, it’s too soon to know whether Trump’s other controversial nominees will be similarly targeted by requesters. So far, Kennedy – a fierce critic of the FDA – stands out as the media’s chief FOIA target among Trump’s HHS nominees.
He certainly has sought the attention. In a social media post on October 25 that received 6.8 million views, Kennedy said “FDA’s war on public health is about to end. . . . If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”
In that same post, on X, Kennedy called out the FDA for its “aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.”
We’ll provide future updates as FOIA requests about the Trump transition continue to roll in. For now, here’s what we know about the news media requests to the FDA targeting Kennedy:
Lever News filed the first media request about Kennedy on November 15, one day after Trump posted his intention to nominate Kennedy. The request was broad, seeking “copies of any emails and letters sent to the FDA from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or any representatives sending those correspondences on his behalf.” Lever News calls itself “a nonpartisan, reader-supported investigative news outlet that holds accountable the people and corporations manipulating the levers of power.” The organization was founded in 2020 by David Sirota, who previously served as a presidential campaign speechwriter for Bernie Sanders.
NBC News came in a few days later, on November 19, with a sweeping request for Kennedy’s pre- and post-election interactions with a raft of top FDA officials. The television news outlet asked for “FDA communications, emails and documents between 10/21/2024 and 11/12/2024 mentioning Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, RFK Jr., Kennedy, and RFK” from the following senior FDA officials: Commissioner Robert M. Califf; Principal Deputy Commissioner Namandje N. Bumpus; Chief Counsel Mark Raza; CFO Benjamin Moncarz; CIO Vid Desai; CMO Hilary D. Marston; Acting Chief Scientist Steven Kozlowski; Chief of Staff Elizabeth Jungman; Deputy Commissioner Kimberlee Trzeciak; Deputy Commissioner James Jones; COO James Sigg; Associate Commissioner Leah Hunter; Associate Commissioner Cheryl Anne Boyce; Associate Commissioner Kaveeta Vasisht; Associate Commissioner Michael C. Rogers; Center for Biologics Director Peter Marks; Center for Devices and Radiological Health Director Michelle R. Traver; Center for Drug Evaluation Director Patrizia Cavazzoni; Center for Tobacco Products Director Brian A. King; Center for Veterinary Medicine Director Tracey H. Forfa; and Oncology Center of Excellence Director Richard Pazdur.
The Wall Street Journal filed its FOIA request on November 20. The Journal’s request listed various hot-button key words, starting with names of some of the same officials listed in NBC’s request the day before, but then veering off into MAGA territory. Among the Journal’s key words: Califf, Bumpus, Varnado, Musk, Elon, Trump, Schedule F, government efficiency, Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, burrowing, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, RFK, Robert Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy, Transition, Project 2025, vaccines, vaccination, MMR, MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, and MAGA. Seeking a quick response, the Journal asked the FDA only to search back to Election Day, November 4.
CNN and Al Jazeera filed their requests with the FDA on November 26. CNN sought “any emails sent (including attachments) by the FDA Office of External Affairs between November 2020 through December 2021 in which any of these terms are mentioned: ‘Children’s Health Defense’ or ‘childrenshealthdefense.org’ or ‘Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’” Al Jazeera asked for “all memos, reports, briefings and correspondence sent and/or received by James Jones, Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods, which relate to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plans to reform the regulation and oversight of the US food supply.”
As of November 30, the FDA hadn’t logged any FOIA requests concerning three prospective nominees Trump announced would report to Kennedy: Martin Makary (FDA commissioner); David Weldon (CDC director); and Janette Nesheiwat (surgeon general).
Bonus Coverage: Who Doesn’t Like Gary Gensler (Final Edition): Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler recently announced that he will remain at his post until the moment Trump takes his presidential oath – noon on January 20.
Trump last week announced his intention to nominate Paul S. Atkins, a former SEC commissioner, as the new chairman. Atkins has been an occasional FOIA target, and his prior pro-cryptocurrency comments are gaining media traction. Watch this space for more.
Remaining until the bitter end gives Gensler – a crypto skeptic — one last chance to exact poetic justice against his critics, including the congressional Republicans who titled their recent SEC oversight hearing “Dazed and Confused: Breaking Down the SEC’s Politicized Approach to Digital Assets.”
As the Wall Street Journal put it, “Gensler’s decision to remain until the very end of the Biden Administration probably disappoints some Republicans who wanted to see him leave sooner. It means he could try to push through some additional measures since Democrats will retain a majority on the five-member SEC as long as he stays.”
Gensler has been a frequent target of FOIA requests, and thus also has received his share of ink in this space. See our story from November 29, 2023, “Who Doesn’t Like Gary Gensler?”
It turns out that Gensler has been a target of more than just FOIA requests.
Bloomberg’s Jason Leopold recently broke a FOIA-based story that revealed death threats against Gensler, which the SEC took seriously. “A couple of people took their anger out through vile voicemails and emails directed at [Gensler],” Leopold wrote. “One person vowed to find, shoot and ‘chop’ up Gensler.” The SEC’s Office of Inspector General launched an investigation, and Florida authorities later arrested the person making the threats, who pleaded guilty to a charge that was redacted by the SEC.
In another case, threats against Gensler were left in a voicemail. No charges were filed, but “the SEC warned the person they could be prosecuted if they continued making calls,” Leopold reported. “The person responded, ‘that’s fair, noted.’”
“What’s interesting,” Leopold wrote, is that the documents reveal that the SEC has a system in place to intercept calls like this, called the Threatening and Abuse Phone Calls System, or TAPS. I wasn’t aware of its existence. Turns out it’s maintained by the agency’s Office of Information Technology, and monitored by the Office of Security Services.”
The most recent FOIA request about TAPS came into the SEC a few months ago from investigator Irvin McCullough. McCullough listed his affiliation as the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection non-profit founded by Washington’s Institute for Policy Studies. His September 14 request sought the standard operating procedures for TAPS from 2022 to the present.
FOIAengine access now is available for all professional members of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of journalism. IRE is the world’s oldest and largest association of investigative journalists. Following the federal government’s shutdown of FOIAonline.gov last year, FOIAengine is the only source for the most comprehensive, fully searchable archive of FOIA requests across dozens of federal departments and agencies. FOIAengine has more robust functionality and searching capabilities, and standardizes data from different agencies to make it easier to work with. PoliScio Analytics is proud to be partnering with IRE to provide this valuable content to investigative reporters worldwide.
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Next: The latest FOIA request from hedge funds.
John A. Jenkins, co-creator of FOIAengine, is a Washington journalist and publisher whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and elsewhere. He is a four-time recipient of the American Bar Association’s Gavel Award Certificate of Merit for his legal reporting and analysis. His most recent book is The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist. Jenkins founded Law Street Media in 2013. Prior to that, he was President of CQ Press, the textbook and reference publishing enterprise of Congressional Quarterly. FOIAengine is a product of PoliScio Analytics (PoliScio.com), a new venture specializing in U.S. political and governmental research, co-founded by Jenkins and Washington lawyer Randy Miller. Learn more about FOIAengine here. To review FOIA requests mentioned in this article, subscribe to FOIAengine.
Write to John A. Jenkins at [email protected].
