Psaki defends Fauci after unearthed emails, calling him 'undeniable asset'

White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended Dr. Anthony Fauci as an “undeniable asset” to the country during the pandemic, after the release of thousands of the nation’s leading disease expert’s emails revealed he initially seemed to brush off evidence that Covid-19 could have originated in a lab.

She noted that President Biden had asked the intelligence community to intensify its efforts to find the origin of Covid-19 and get back to him in 90 days. The emails were obtained by BuzzFeed via a Freedom of Information Act request.  Fauci defended himself in an MSNBC appearance Thursday but stressed he is "keeping an open mind" to COVID's origins. He said that he didn’t necessarily dismiss the lab leak theory as a conspiracy but felt it was "more likely to be" an animal-to-human transmission scenario.