Wray: FBI ‘For Quite Some Time’ Determined Lab Incident Is ‘Most Likely’ Origin of COVID

During an interview with the Fox News Channel released on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray publicly confirmed that the FBI assessed that the COVID virus most likely originated from a lab by stating that the agency has, “for quite some time now, assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”

Wray said, [relevant remarks begin around 16:45] “[T]he FBI has, for quite some time now, assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”

He continued, “Let me step back for a second, the FBI has folks, agents, professionals, analysts, virologists, microbiologists, etc. 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 threats 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. I should add that our work related to this continues, and there are not a whole lot of details I can share that aren’t classified. 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…and that’s unfortunate for everybody.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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