Owen Shroyer: NIH’s redaction of FOIA documents on Wuhan research a “big middle finger”

02/23/2022 / By Ramon Tomey

InfoWars host Owen Shroyer denounced the National Institutes of Health‘s (NIH) redaction of documents about its research on the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). The institute redacting almost 300 pages in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request constituted a “big middle finger” to those seeking the truth, he said.

Non-profit news outlet the Intercept was responsible for the release of the documents. It first filed an FOIA request back in September 2020, but the NIH refused to comply. It was only after the Intercept sued the NIH that it yielded to the FOIA request, agreeing to provide thousands of pages of relevant materials. Documents provided by the agency in September and December 2020 touched on the gain-of-function research performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China’s Hubei Province.

However, the most recent batch of documents sent by the NIH on Feb. 15 underscored what the Intercept calls “an ongoing lack of transparency.”

A Feb. 20 article stated: “292 of 314 pages – more than 90 percent of the current release – were completely redacted. Besides a big gray rectangle that obscures any meaningful text, the pages show only a date, page number and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) logo. The remaining [22] pages also contain significant redactions. Even when the redactions are technically justifiable under FOIA – the presumption should be to give the public as much information as possible, not the least.”

“That’s just a big middle finger. NIH gets the FOIA request and says ‘Okay, here’s our 292 pages of research at the Wuhan lab.’ You get it, [and] you say ‘These are all blank.’ They sent them an empty book. Where’s the outrage? They’re clearly covering something up here; couldn’t be more obvious,” Shroyer said.

“Nothing to see here, don’t worry about it. I’m sure they’re not trying to hide anything or cover anything up. After all, they shared the documents. Unbelievable.” (Related: Documents prove NIH funded coronavirus research in Wuhan.)

Shroyer slams PolitiFact for defending hypocrisy

Shroyer also denounced fact-checking website PolitiFact for defending mask mandates for school children, despite attendees of the recent Super Bowl – children included – watching the game without face coverings.

“PolitiFact sees that everybody’s criticizing what’s going on in California, saying: ‘Hey, why are you making the kids wear the masks? Look at the Super Bowl: 70,000 plus people, all the celebrities, all the Democrats – nobody’s wearing a mask. Everybody’s partying, but the kids have to wear masks. That doesn’t make sense.’ So PolitiFact [wants] to fact-check that.”

“You know, these people are just scum. They just love their mandates, their child torture [and] making the kids wear the masks eight hours a day. It’s completely foreign to you or me; that’s the psychology of these people. I don’t know why they like torturing children [or] why they want to dominate you, but that’s who and what they are,” Shroyer added.

The InfoWars host said PolitiFact and its writers are “out of touch with their souls.” He continued: “You write fact-check stories because you’re upset that people are accurately pointing out a clear double standard and hypocrisy – when 70,000 Super Bowl fans can party in a dome, but a room full of 15 school students have to wear a mask all day. You don’t see that obvious double standard, you don’t see that clear hypocrisy.”

“When you are in such denial of reality; when you supported deadly mass rioting two years ago, and now you don’t like peaceful protesting; when you can’t even give an inch to admit the clear hypocrisy of 70,000 fans at the Super Bowl, but your kids can’t take their masks off; there’s something wrong with you. Something has gone seriously wrong in your head [and] soul.”