China scoffs at FBI claims Wuhan lab leak likely caused pandemic

He fbi assessed that a leak from a laboratory in the central city China of wuhan probably caused the pandemic covidsaid director Christopher Wray, a claim that China said “I had no credibility.”

“The FBI has long considered that the origin of the pandemic is probably due to a possible incident in a laboratory in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News on Tuesday.

His comments come after The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the US Department of Energy assessed with a low level of confidence that the pandemic was due to an inadvertent leak from a laboratory in China.

Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, continue to judge that the pandemic was likely the result of natural transmission, and two are undecided, the Journal reported.

White House Homeland Security spokesman John Kirby said Monday that the US government had not reached a definitive conclusion or consensus on the origin of the pandemic.

China denounced Wray’s comments on Wednesday, saying it was strongly opposed to any form of “political manipulation” of the facts.

“Based on the US intelligence community’s poor track record of fraud and deception, the conclusions they draw are without any credibility.”Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing. “…We urge the US side to respect science and facts.”

Wray said he couldn’t share many details of the agency’s assessment because they were classified. He accused the Chinese government of “do everything possible to try to frustrate and obfuscate” the efforts of the United States and other countries to better understand the origins of the pandemic.

The virus was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019 before spreading across the globe, killing nearly 7 million people.

Source: Reuters