FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said publicly Tuesday that federal investigators believe the COVID-19 pandemic likely started from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Mr. Wray told Fox News in an interview. “Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.”
He didn’t specify when the FBI determined that the deadly pandemic started in a Chinese lab. Democrats and the mainstream media for years have downplayed and even ridiculed Republicans for claiming that the Wuhan lab likely is the source of the outbreak that has killed more than 1.1 million Americans and 6.8 million worldwide.
Mr. Wray also slammed Beijing for stonewalling international efforts to find out what happened.
“I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it 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 U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing. And that’s unfortunate for everybody,” he said.
His comments come after The Wall Street Journal first reported that the Department of Energy has assessed with “low confidence” that the COVID-19 pandemic probably originated from a lab leak in China.
The Journal report said the FBI had reached the same conclusion with “moderate confidence” in 2021.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology had been studying coronaviruses for years and the epidemic began in Wuhan.
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday that critics “should stop stirring up arguments about laboratory leaks, stop smearing China and stop politicizing the issue of the virus origin.”
The Energy Department’s report was raised Tuesday by Republican senators during a hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, urged his Democratic colleagues to start “a full-fledged investigation” into the origins of the virus.
“We need to understand exactly how COVID started so we can prevent it from happening in the future,” Mr. Johnson said. “I think this committee, we have the investigatory background. I think it’s extremely important, as well as other aspects of our response to COVID … There should be nothing partisan about this whatsoever.”
Sen. Roger Marshall, Kansas Republican, said the Department of Energy “changed their mind” and now believes that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab, “joining our own FBI.”
He urged Colleen Shogan, who is President Biden’s nominee to serve as Archivist of the U.S., to help to declassify government records pertaining to the origins of COVID-19.
Ms. Shogan said she would follow the law and seek the proper balance between transparency and national security.
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, said the National Institutes of Health has repeatedly stonewalled his requests for documents on the origin of the pandemic.
“This is a real problem, that the government is resisting records’ release,” Mr. Paul told the nominee.
Mr. Wray said in the interview with Bret Baier that aired Tuesday evening that the FBI’s work on the origins of the virus is continuing.
“There are not a whole lot of details I can share that aren’t classified,” he said.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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