FBI chief Christopher Wray confirms agency’s belief COVID came from Chinese lab leak

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday confirmed the bureau’s reported stance that the COVID-19 virus came from a Chinese lab leak.

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

Wray’s comments were aired two days after it was reported the Department of Energy determined with “low confidence” that the virus that causes COVID-19 came from a Chinese laboratory.

The Wall Street Journal’s Sunday report had also revealed that the FBI concluded with “moderate confidence” that a lab accident in China was the origin of the disease.

Wray told Baier that US officials were still probing COVID-19 origins and revealed China has been 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 explained to Baier during Tuesday’s “Special Report” the bureau has a number of 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.”

“So here you’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans and that’s precisely what that capability was designed for,” Wray additionally said.

The Department of Energy’s assertion that COVID was from a lab came with “low confidence,” according to a Wall Street Journal report. The department’s assessment came in an update to a 2021 document from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’ office, the Journal reported.

The update comes in light of new intelligence, more study of academic literature and with help from outside experts, a senior intelligence official told the Journal.

It also reportedly reaffirms agreement in the intelligence community that COVID was not the result of a Chinese biological weapons program.

The FBI concluded more than a year ago a lab accident in China sparked the respiratory disease that has killed millions around the world and over a million Americans since it began to spread across the country in March 2020.  

Meanwhile the National Intelligence Council and four other unidentified agencies still contend the virus spread to humans due to natural transmission from an infected animal, the Journal reported. But those determinations were also reportedly made with “low confidence.”

Wray, during the Fox News sit-down, stressed that FBI and other agencies are still investigating COVID origins, but there wasn’t much else he could share because most of the material is classified.

The White House refused to confirm reports of the Energy Department’s assertion Monday and said there remains no “consensus” how COVID began.

Former White House chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci warned Monday “we may never know” the source of the outbreak and urged people to keep an “open mind to all possibilities” in an interview with the Boston Globe. 

Fauci retired from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the end of last year.