Federal Lawsuit Targets Pre-Pandemic DARPA Biodefense Proposals as DHS Chief Raises Internal Security Concerns

AENN

Mar 3, 2026

Judicial Watch has filed a FOIA lawsuit seeking Defense Department records on gain-of-function funding proposals, as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem alleges internal surveillance and undisclosed COVID-era travel data involving U.S. scientists and Wuhan researchers.

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Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense seeking records related to biodefense and gain-of-function research proposals submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem publicly alleged the existence of undisclosed internal files and surveillance within her agency.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, follows what Judicial Watch says was a failure by DARPA to respond to a November 7, 2025 FOIA request seeking “all biodefense and gain-of-function (GoF) funding proposals submitted to the DARPA Biological Technologies Office (BTO) prior to December 2019.” The complaint is available through Judicial Watch in Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense.

The Biological Technologies Office was launched in 2014 under DARPA with a stated mission to push the boundaries of biological science and confront emerging ethical and security challenges associated with advanced biotechnology.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, “Gain-of-function proposals likely were active in the Defense Department’s pipeline prior to the pandemic. Our lawsuit intends to find out what these proposals entailed.”

The legal action follows previous congressional scrutiny. In April 2024, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee sent letters to multiple agencies seeking information about the DEFUSE project, a 2018 grant proposal led by EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The DEFUSE proposal was submitted to DARPA under the PREEMPT program and sought to insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus to create a chimeric virus.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), then ranking member of the committee, wrote that “at least 15 federal agencies knew from the beginning of the pandemic that EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were seeking federal funding in 2018 to create a virus genetically very similar if not identical to COVID-19.”

Meanwhile, Secretary Noem made remarks during a February 2026 interview in which she described discovering a secure compartmented information facility within DHS headquarters that she said contained files unknown to senior leadership. In a publicly circulated video, she stated, “I just found the other day a whole room on this campus that was a secret SCIF secure facility that had files nobody knew existed.” She added that “there was individuals working in there that had secret files that nobody knew about on some of these most controversial topics.”

WATCH:

Noem also referenced Customs and Border Protection data concerning international travel during the COVID-19 period and stated, “There are scientists that participated with that Wuhan lab. How they were traveling back and forth between each other, and working on those experiments.”

She further alleged internal surveillance, saying, “Some of my own employees in my department have downloaded software on my phone and my laptop to spy on me, to record our meetings.” She added, “I always believed when people talked about the deep state before that it existed. I never would have dreamed that it was as bad as it is.”

Separately, reporting published by Independent Newsroom cited documents obtained by the White Coat Waste Project indicating that the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana reported a possible “theft, loss, or release” of a select biological agent in November 2025. The report referenced a USDA-CDC Form 3 submitted to the Federal Select Agent Program on November 13, 2025. No public details have been released regarding the specific agent or circumstances, and NIH has not issued a statement.

Judicial Watch has filed multiple actions related to COVID-19 research and federal oversight. In June 2025, it sued the Defense Department seeking records regarding possible infections among U.S. service members during the 2019 World Military Games in Wuhan, citing a December 2022 Pentagon report. In prior litigation, records described NIH-funded gain-of-function research tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Additional document disclosures referenced by Judicial Watch include grants to EcoHealth Alliance for bat coronavirus research, NIH communications regarding China withholding COVID data, and emails between then-NIH Director Francis Collins and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases officials.

The Defense Department has not publicly responded to the pending lawsuit. DHS has not issued additional clarification regarding Secretary Noem’s statements.

The litigation and agency disclosures come amid ongoing debates over federal oversight of high-risk biological research and the scope of executive branch transparency in matters tied to national security and pandemic preparedness.