FBI chief Christopher Wray reaffirms lab leak theory

On Tuesday, the FBI’s chief Christopher Wray re-iterated the agency’s belief that the “most likely” origins of COVID-19 were from a lab leak in Wuhan.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are mostly likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” China, Wray said during an interview with Fox News.

Wray’s comments went on air two days after it was reported the Department of Energy released their own findings that new evidence suggested COVID-19 came from a Chinese laboratory.

The Wall Street Journal’s Sunday report also noted that the FBI concluded with “moderate confidence” that a lab leak in Wuhan started the spread of the virus.

Wray told Bair that US officials continued to investigate the origins of COVID, despite Chinese officials stonewalling the investigation.

“The Chinese government, seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing and that’s unfortunate for everybody,” Wray said.

Wray also said during the same interview with Fox News that the FBI has several officials “who focus specifically on the dangers of biological threats, which include things like novel viruses like COVID and the concerns that in the wrong hands — some bad guys, a hostile nation state, a terrorist, a criminal, the threat that those could pose.”

On Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that President Biden is behind the idea of “a whole-of-government effort” to ascertain the origins of COVID.

He went on to say that the United States has not yet reached a firm conclusion on the matter.

“We’re just not there yet,” he said. “If we have something that is ready to be briefed to the American people and the Congress, we will do that.”

China has not yet responded to Wray’s comments.

They did reference a WHO investigation that concluded a lab leak was “extremely unlikely”.

“Certain parties should stop rehashing the ‘lab leak’ narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicizing origins-tracing,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.