Conservative watchdog notches win in court as CDC ordered to stop deleting emails

A conservative government watchdog group secured a legal victory against the Biden-Harris administration by compelling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop deleting employee emails they say had been done in violation of the Federal Records Act.

America First Legal, the right-leaning, Washington, D.C. based public interest organization founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, sought records concerning the CDC’s endorsement of the controversial gender ideology within public schools in February 2023. In response, the CDC told AFL that it systematically deletes the emails of most employees 30 days after they depart from the agency.

As of Friday, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is now required under a preliminary injunction granted to AFL to enlist the help of Attorney General Merrick Garland and inform Congress to recover the deleted emails and halt the destruction of records. 

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"Notably, while the Biden-Harris administration has been slapped down for illegally violating the law, CDC employees’ homes were not searched and raided without notice or consent, nor have their families had to endure the trauma and onslaught of legal fees or indictments," AFL said in a news release. 

"Yet, the Biden-Harris Administration did exactly that to President Trump. We cannot have a country where government bureaucrats are allowed to circumvent the law without repercussion, and innocent civilians are subjected to invasive and unlawful political persecution for saying the "wrong" thing. The two-tiered justice system in the United States has never been more prevalent," the group said. 

In April, AFL filed the initial lawsuit against the Biden-Harris Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and NARA.

"The Biden-Harris Administration was actively destroying the records of federal employees at the CDC in blatant violation of the law–and we are pleased that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered a stop to their illegal conduct," AFL executive director Gene Hamilton said in a statement. 

AFL subsequently reached out to NARA urging an investigation into the CDC’s policy of deleting employee emails. 

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"NARA investigated the allegations but determined that because the ‘CDC instructs individual email account holders to apply retention based on the email’s content value and its applicability to a NARA-approved records schedule,’ NARA considered the matter closed. In short, NARA entrusted individual CDC employees to decide which emails can be automatically deleted," AFL said in a news release.x

This isn't the first time the CDC has been in hot water over its influence in the public. Last year, the CDC reportedly had "significant input on pandemic-era social media policies" at Facebook and Instagram and worked to "silence dissent" related to the COVID vaccine. 

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Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, denied attempting to suppress the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic began as a result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China, during the heated House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing this summer.

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Fox News Digital has reached out to the CDC, HHS and NARA for comment. 

Fox News Digital's Brian Flood and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.