Jen Psaki’s Two Word Response to Fox’s Peter Doocy on Pressing China Over Wuhan Lab Leak Reports

White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted at a Monday press conference that the Biden administration was pushing for more information from China about the origins of Covid-19.

The remarks came in response to a question from Fox News’ Peter Doocy, who asked about a newly disclosed intelligence report that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with Covid-19. The country’s government did not inform the World Health Organization of the cases. That organization first reported cases of “viral pneumonia” circulating in China on December 31, more than a month later.

“Why isn’t President Biden pushing for more access, more information to get to the bottom of what happened?” Doocy asked.

“We are,” Psaki replied. “And we have repeatedly called for the WHO to support an expert-driven evaluation of the pandemic’s origins that is free from interference or politicization.”

“There were phase I results that came through,” she added. “We were not — during that first phase of the investigation, there was not access to data, there was not information provided. Now we’re hopeful that WHO can move into a more transparent, independent, phase II investigation.”

Doocy pressed the issue. “With 589,920 dead Americans, at what point does President Biden say we don’t want to wait for the WHO? We don’t know what we’re doing. This needs to be an American-led effort to get to the bottom of what happened.”

Psaki attempted to respond by saying the administration lacked data, but Doocy interjected. “[Biden] talks all the time about how he’s known President Xi [Jinping] for a long time, so why can’t he just call and ask him for that information?” he asked.

“I think you’re misunderstanding how this process actually works,” Psaki said. “An international investigation led by the World Health Organization is something that we’ve actually been pressing for several months.”

She added, “What we can’t do … is leap ahead of an actual international process. We don’t have enough information and data to draw a conclusion at this point in time.”

Watch above via CBSN.