Top CDC Scientist’s Records Missing, Health Department Says

Dr. Tom Shimabukuro heads the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.

A sign at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta on Aug. 25, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Records from a top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are missing, the CDC’s parent agency has informed a U.S. senator.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in March that “they are having difficulty locating records,” Johnson said on April 9.

More recently, HHS officials said that Dr. Tom Shimabukuro’s records “remain lost and, potentially, removed from HHS’s email system altogether,” Johnson added.

Shimabukuro is the director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, which researches the safety of vaccines, according to the CDC’s website. He frequently spoke at vaccine meetings, at times offering false information, The Epoch Times previously reported.

He was also involved in vaccine research, including monitoring vaccine safety in pregnant women.

Shimabukuro, the CDC, and HHS did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Johnson, the chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, disclosed the situation with Shimabukuro’s records in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Juliet Hodgkins, acting inspector general of HHS.

“Dr. Shimabukuro’s potential mishandling of his official records is highly concerning,” Johnson wrote. “His actions, if true, would have directly obstructed my multi-year oversight efforts of the COVID-19 vaccines and would be in clear violation of my November 19, 2024 demand to HHS, CDC, and the Food and Drug Administration to ‘preserve all records referring or relating to the development, safety, and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.’

“Furthermore, given Dr. Shimabukuro’s role at CDC, which includes monitoring adverse events relating to the COVID-19 vaccines, his communications are directly responsive to my January 28, 2025, subpoena to HHS for records relating to the development and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines. Any attempt to obstruct or interfere with my investigatory efforts would be grounds for contempt of Congress.”

The senator also said that if Shimabukuro mishandled records, he may have violated laws such as the Federal Records Act.

Johnson asked Bondi, Patel, and Hodgkins to investigate whether Shimabukuro and other officials within HHS deleted or destroyed agency records, including any attempts to avoid congressional oversight or Freedom of Information Act requests.

Spokespeople for the Department of Justice and HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) confirmed in emails to The Epoch Times that the agencies received the letter, but they declined to comment further. The FBI declined to comment.

Another HHS official, National Institutes of Health scientist Dr. David Morens, was previously shown—through emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act—to have talked about how he learned to make messages disappear after requests under the act were lodged.

“So I think we are all safe,” he wrote in one of the emails in 2021.

Johnson also requested an HHS inspector general investigation of Morens. The HHS hasn’t confirmed whether any probes were initiated, according to Johnson.

“To date, the HHS OIG refuses to confirm that it has initiated any of these investigations. The HHS OIG’s lack of transparency with Congress is unacceptable,” Johnson wrote. “If the allegations regarding Dr. Shimabukuro’s mishandling of agency records are true, then it will certainly raise questions about the effectiveness of the HHS OIG’s oversight and cast doubt on whether the HHS OIG actually did what I asked it to do nineteen months ago.”