Rep. Moulton: ‘Not Entirely Surprised’ by Energy Department’s COVID Lab Leak Assessment

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) descends the House entrance stairs following the Friends of Ireland reception on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 12, 2020. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said he was “not entirely surprised” by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) assessment that a lab leak was the likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m not entirely surprised. The Chinese have mishandled COVID at every step of the way by trying to sweep it under the rug. Trying to try a strategy of zero COVID that utterly failed,” Moulton told CNN on Feb. 26. “And tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Chinese are dead as a result of the mismanagement of this pandemic by the Chinese Communist Party.

“So for it to come out that the whole thing started because of mismanagement, I mean, look, we need to see whether this is true, but if it is, I don’t find it surprising at all.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 26 on a classified document the Energy Department sent to the White House and crucial members of Congress. There is “low confidence” in the conclusion, intelligence officials told WSJ and CNN. That conclusion means that the assessment cannot be said with absolute certainty.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Energy for comment. A DOE spokesperson did not confirm the classified document’s existence but told WSJ and CNN that the department “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the president directed.”

There has been speculation over the past few years that the pandemic originated in a virology lab in Wuhan, China.

Appearing on CNN Feb. 26, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan did not confirm the DOE’s assessment.

He said that “there is a variety of views in the intelligence community. Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.

“Here’s what I can tell you. President Biden has directed repeatedly every element of our intelligence community to put effort and resources behind getting to the bottom of this question. And one of the things in that Wall Street Journal report which I can’t confirm or deny, but I will say the reference to the Department of Energy, President Biden specifically requested that the National Labs, which are part of the Department of Energy, be brought into this assessment because he wants to put every tool at use to be able to figure out what happened here,” said Sullivan.

“And if we gain any further insight or information, we will share it with Congress and we will share it with the American people. But, right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question.”

The DOE and FBI have concluded that the pandemic originated in a lab, while the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has said that it “was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2.”

China rejected the WSJ’s report.

“The origin of the novel coronavirus is a scientific issue and should not be politicized,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Feb. 27.