The FBI is currently investigating the coverup of the origins of COVID-19, according to agency director Dan Bongino.
In a Twitter post on Thursday, Bongino said multiple offices are now investigating how the origins of the virus were covered up.
“As we read and process reports of a new COVID strain emerging,” Bongino posted, “I want you to know that we are actively investigating, in multiple field offices, the cover-up of the origin of the COVID virus, along with associated matters requiring our attention.”
Bongino provided no further information on which offices are involved or what the “associated matters” are.
The Trump administration has given its official support to the lab-origin theory, after years of denials from the Biden administration, experts and the mainstream media.
Last month, a page on the White House website was altered to state the virus was likely to have escaped from a research laboratory in Wuhan, China.
The page also offered sharp criticism of Anthony Fauci, former White House COVID-19 advisor, and others it says were involved in attempting to discredit the lab-leak theory.
Some of these individuals, including most prominently Anthony Fauci, were given preemptive pardons by President Joe Biden on his final day in office, in order to prevent federal prosecutions—although President Biden insisted the pardons were not an admission of any kind of wrongdoing.
Bongino’s comments come as a new strain of COVID-19, NB.1.8.1, has been driving up case numbers in Asia, Europe and now the US.
The number of cases detected in the US at present remains small.