Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said Sunday he was not surprised by the growing support for the theory that a lab leak in China caused the COVID-19 pandemic. (See the video below.)
Moulton was interviewed by CNN’s Jim Acosta after the news outlet reported the US Department of Energy now believes the cause of the outbreak, which killed more than 6.8 million worldwide, came from a laboratory leak. The FBI previously sided with the lab hypothesis as well, but divisions remain in the U.S. intelligence community over whether it was launched in a lab or jumped from animal to human at the Wuhan wildlife market.
The Energy Department reportedly came to the conclusion with “little confidence,” but Acosta asked Moulton, who sits on the House committee that oversees China’s Communist party, about his reaction.
“I mean, look, I’m not that surprised,” Moulton said. “The Chinese have mishandled COVID at every step, trying to sweep it under the carpet, trying a zero COVID strategy that failed. And tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Chinese people have died because of the Chinese Communist Party’s mismanagement of this pandemic.
“To come out that it all started because of mismanagement, I mean, it looks, we have to see if this is true, but if it is, I’m not too surprised,” Moulton continued.
At the start of the pandemic, Moulton withdrew from a bipartisan resolution blaming China for the outbreak, saying it would fuel racism.
China has refused to cooperate with the international investigation.