Someone is playing CYA. Notice how he doesn’t deny the science, that Wuhan Flu can only occur by design and not organically.
The thing is - by definition - they WERE investigating gain of function because that’s what you need to know so you know how to STOP transmission!
They weren’t trying to enable gain of function on viruses (which is what he says here) but they were trying to figure out HOW it happens.
Fauci and he wanted to “save the world” and their hubris has killed millions either accidentally or from an intentional release as a bioweapon.
Yes, basically he sees the writing on the wall and is trying to deflect scrutiny back to WIV instead of his institution.
“Sure we worked with these viruses and realized that you could make a bat SARS virus that would be pandemic in humans, but we didn’t actually MAKE a weaponized version of that virus *cough cough* *looks at China* *cough*”