The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents containing information about the frequency of myocarditis in people who received the COVID-19 vaccines — by producing a fully redacted 148-page document.

A pair of tweets by Epoch Times reporter Zachary Stieber on March 7 and 8 revealed the FOIA request “asked for information about several studies the CDC posted on myocarditis cases in COVID-19 vaccine recipients.

“A CDC document sent to us in response to a Freedom of Information Act request … is fully redacted,” Stieber wrote, adding that a second document the CDC provided as part of the same request “is mostly redacted.”

The redacted documents prompted criticism from media, medical experts and others, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman on leave of Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

According to Vigilant News, the fully redacted document is “a 148-page report on myocarditis after COVID-19 injection.”

“It seems that there is something very damning that they’re trying to hide because every single word is redacted,” Vigilant News wrote.

Responding to a question from X (formerly Twitter) user Charles Rozier, who asked if it is even possible to ascertain whether the fully redacted document “actually complies with the FOIA request,” Stieber wrote, “One cannot know.”

According to Stieber, one of the studies the MOVING project produced was published in The Lancet in September 2022.

That study found that “After at least 90 days since onset of myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, most individuals in our cohort were considered recovered by health-care providers.”

However, according to the study, “These findings might not be generalisable given the small sample size and further follow-up is needed for the subset of patients with atypical test results or not considered recovered.”

Stieber said a CDC spokesperson told The Epoch Times, “The CDC plans to submit another paper on updated findings from the project for peer review” in January 2025.

CDC’s ‘relationship with the truth is dubious at best’

Medical and health experts told The Defender they were unsurprised by the CDC’s actions.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for CHD, said the release of a fully redacted document “is very typical of CDC as they have been lying and hiding since the Tuskegee experiment and before.”

He added:

“Their relationship with the truth is dubious at best and they are committed to hiding the very obvious connection between COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis as they have from the beginning of the rollout of the vaccine.

“The CDC knew of this connection as early as January 2021, just weeks after the release of the vaccine, and has never been forthcoming regarding it. It is criminal that they continue to defraud the American public.”

In 2022, the CDC refused to release documents in response to three FOIA requests the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) filed. The requests pertained to COVID-19 vaccine injury data the CDC collected via its V-safe app. ICAN sued, and in September 2022, a federal court ordered the CDC to release the data.

Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender “The CDC and public health agencies cannot wonder why the medical community and public at large has lost all trust in their honesty, integrity, and competency. Producing this document in response to a request is a disgrace.”

He noted that the redacted document was cited in the Arizona Senate’s Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee meeting on March 15, by Senator Janae Shamp.

“One hundred forty-eight pages. The entire thing is redacted. What good does a study do if there’s nothing there?” Shamp, a registered nurse, said during that meeting.

Heavily redacted documents obtained by CHD via a FOIA request in March 2023, and documents leaked to Project Veritas that month revealed that the CDC and Pfizer withheld evidence that COVID-19 vaccinations were causing myocarditis.

A study published in February found that, regardless of myocarditis severity, there were 71.7 times as many myocarditis cases among the vaccinated as among those hospitalized for COVID-19.