US: FBI chief says COVID-19 pandemic came from lab leak

The director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation publicly weighed in on what might have been the source of the COVID-19 pandemic. FBI director Christopher Wray said the agency assessed that the pandemic was caused by a leak in a laboratory in China.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Wray said that a lab leak in Wuhan, where the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in December 2019, was the source of the pandemic. Wray also said that China has sought to obstruct efforts to identify the origin of the virus but added that investigations are still taking place and that he was currently unable to disclose other details.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” said Wray.

“I will just make the observation that the Chinese government…has been doing its best to try and thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing,” said the FBI chief.

This follows a report by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, saying that the US Energy Department assessed with low confidence that the pandemic was the result of a lab leak in China. Four other government agencies and a national intelligence panel, however, believe that the pandemic was a result of natural transmission, while two agencies remain undecided.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday that Washington had yet to reach a definitive conclusion on the matter.

Last week, Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chairs the congressional panel on China, sought to request answers from the FBI about the alleged police outposts operated by China’s ruling Communist Party. Gallagher said in the letter to the agency that the alleged outposts as well as “other tools of coercion”, violate the rights of American “citizens, residents, and visitors.”

Wray told Congress back in November that he was concerned about the Chinese government setting up its own police outposts in cities across the country to potentially carry out influence operations. In the letter, Gallagher requested that Wray reveal when the FBI became aware of the matter and how widespread the alleged outposts are in the country.