FBI Director Christopher Wray said during an interview on Tuesday that the FBI assesses that a laboratory in Wuhan, China, is responsible for the outbreak of the COVID pandemic and that there is classified material to back up the bureau’s assessment.
The remarks from Wray come after the Department of Energy also recently assessed that the pandemic was the result of a Chinese lab leak, according to The Wall Street Journal.
When asked by Fox News anchor Bret Baier about the FBI’s assessment, Wray responded, “the FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”
“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,” Wray continued. “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,” Wray added. “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. 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.”
WATCH:
FBI Director Christopher Wray says that COVID-19 likely originated in a lab in communist China
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 28, 2023
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TRANSCRIPT:
BRET BAIER: There’s this Department of Energy study that says it’s likely to have come from a lab leak, although the confidence low, it cites the FBI. What is the determination by the FBI?
CHRISTOPHER WRAY: So as you note, Bret, the FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan. Let me step back for a second. You know, 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 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. 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.