‘There Is Not a Consensus’ Yet: White House Spox Clarifies New Report Not Final Word On Covid-19’s Origins
John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council in the White House, answered questions from Fox News’s Jacqui Heinrich on Monday about a new report from the U.S. Department of Energy assessing that Covid-19 likely originated from a lab.
“John, on the Department of Energy’s findings, the lab leak most likely caused the pandemic. How should Americans respond? How should Americans understand China’s response here, saying that, ‘this is politically motivated? It’s a lie. There’s no science to back it’ – and swatting down this information,” Heinrich asked at the highly anticipated White House press conference.
“Well, I can’t speak for the Chinese and I wouldn’t endeavor to do that. But just let me back up a little bit. The president made trying to find the origins of Covid a priority right when he came into office. And he’s got a whole of government effort designed to do that,” Kirby replied, adding:
There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how Covid started. There is just not an intelligence community consensus. And I would add that one of the things the president did was, he’s the one tasked the national labs, which were put up through the Department of Energy to study this as well. So it wasn’t just an effort that was confined to the intelligence community. That work is still ongoing. But the president believes it’s really important that we continue that work and that we find out as best we can how it started so that we can better prevent a future pandemic.
“I mean, that’s the idea here, is to get ahead of it so that, you know, should there be another one or should it be the signs of another one, we can better get ahead of it,” Kirby concluded.
“China, though, is pretty clearly accusing the Biden administration of smearing them and trying to say that this is baseless, people shouldn’t believe it and it’s a politically motivated attack,” Heinrich followed up.
“I’m not going to get ahead of where we are in the process, Jacqui. The intelligence community and the rest of the government is still looking at this,” Kirby replied noting that various U.S. intelligence agencies have split on the topic in the past.
“There’s not been a definitive conclusion. So it’s difficult for me to say, nor should I feel like I should have to defend press reporting about a possible preliminary indication here,” Kirby added, referring to the media storm created by the new report.
“What the president wants is facts. He wants the whole government designed to go get those facts. And that’s what we’re doing. And we’re just not there yet. And when we’re there yet, and if we have something that is is is ready to be briefed to the American people and the Congress, then we’re going to do that,” Kirby added.
“How will the president respond to China, though, if it’s determined that they lied about all this and now are trying to paint the administration as, in such a negative light, how will he respond to Xi?” Heinrich asked.
“Well, let’s not get ahead of where we are in the process right now. There is not a consensus on what caused Covid to start. The president wants to understand that so we can prevent better future pandemics. He’s made that a priority. And I just don’t we don’t have an answer to speak to. And I certainly so given that we don’t have a consensus, it would be foolish for me to get out ahead of speculation on hypothetical situations to come. We just aren’t there yet,” Kirby concluded.
Watch the full clip above via C-SPAN.
