Biden's Own COVID Czar Now Says the Virus 'Probably' Leaked From a Wuhan Lab

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A Former Insider Changes His Mind

Ashish Jha served as the White House's COVID-19 response coordinator under President Biden. During his CNN "State of the Union" appearance with anchor Dana Bash, he admitted his thinking has shifted dramatically since he held that job.

When Jha joined the Biden administration, he assumed the virus almost certainly jumped from an animal to a human, perhaps through a market in Wuhan. Now, he says, the evidence points elsewhere.

He told Bash that after reviewing the information available to him, he has concluded a lab-related incident is more likely than a natural spillover. Jha was careful to stress that no one — not even U.S. officials — knows the answer for certain, and that only authorities in China hold the missing pieces.

Jha later reposted the clip on X, adding that his view was not new and that he had privately held it since his time in the White House. He described the likely scenario as accidental, not deliberate or engineered.

Years of Media Dismissal

For much of 2020, the lab-leak theory was treated in large parts of the press as a fringe, debunked idea. Major outlets ran headlines flatly rejecting it, and several social media platforms restricted posts that raised the possibility, citing misinformation policies.

That stance began to crack in 2023, when it emerged that even government scientists had privately taken the theory seriously far earlier than they let on publicly. Critics — including comedian Jon Stewart, who publicly mocked the reluctance of health officials to even entertain the idea — argued that the swift dismissal reflected politics more than science.

Independent reporting has since suggested the rush to label the theory a "conspiracy" damaged public trust in institutions that were supposed to inform, not manage, the national conversation. National Public Radio has since reported that the scientific debate over the pandemic's origin is far less settled among virologists than U.S. intelligence agencies suggest, and that key genetic evidence relied on incomplete data supplied by the Chinese government.

What U.S. Intelligence Actually Says

The American intelligence community has never reached unanimous agreement, but the trend has moved steadily toward the lab-leak explanation. A declassified 2023 assessment found that the FBI and the Department of Energy leaned toward a lab-related origin with low confidence, while several other agencies favored natural transmission — also with low confidence.

That report detailed how the Wuhan Institute of Virology had collaborated with China's military between 2017 and 2019 on pathogen research relevant to biosecurity, though it stated the known collaborative work did not involve a virus that could plausibly be COVID-19's ancestor.

The picture shifted further in early 2025. Newly appointed CIA Director John Ratcliffe made assessing the Wuhan lab theory a top priority, and the agency subsequently moved from an undecided position to favoring a possible Chinese lab leak, albeit with low confidence. That made the CIA the third major agency, alongside the FBI and Department of Energy, to lean toward a laboratory origin.

Congress has weighed in too. A House committee investigation concluded in late 2024 that a lab-related incident tied to risky "gain-of-function" research remained the most plausible explanation, and criticized the oversight system for such research as fragmented and inadequate.

Beijing's Response: Deflection Over Disclosure

China has consistently rejected the lab-leak theory and insists it has fully cooperated with international investigators. Foreign Ministry spokespeople have repeatedly dismissed the accusations as political attacks and, at times, suggested the virus originated outside China altogether.

But that posture has done little to satisfy investigators. The World Health Organization has repeatedly urged Beijing to release the underlying data from the pandemic's earliest days, requests China has continued to sideline. In 2021, Chinese officials rejected a WHO request to revisit the original outbreak sites, insisting instead on redirecting the search toward other countries.

This pattern of stonewalling has become a central argument for lab-leak proponents: if Beijing's own account of a natural spillover were solid, they argue, there would be little reason to withhold data from independent scientists five years on. For Washington, the lack of transparency from an authoritarian, one-party system has reinforced long-standing concerns that Beijing prioritizes political control over public accountability — a pattern critics say defines the Chinese Communist Party's approach to crises generally, not just this one.

A Political Backdrop

The Trump administration has been the most consistent institutional voice pushing the lab-leak explanation, publishing material asserting it as the most credible account of the pandemic's beginning and pointing to gain-of-function research and inadequate lab biosafety standards in Wuhan as red flags. Chinese officials have accused Washington of "smearing China with unsubstantiated accusations" and using the theory for political manipulation.

Jha's public acknowledgment is notable precisely because he was not part of that political camp. As a Biden appointee, his shift lends outside credibility to a theory that was, for years, associated almost exclusively with Trump-aligned officials and commentators.

Outlook

The scientific and intelligence picture remains incomplete, and officials across agencies still describe their conclusions as low-confidence judgments rather than proof. But the direction of travel is clear: more agencies, more lawmakers, and now more former Biden-era officials are converging on the lab-leak explanation as the most likely one.

Without full transparency from Beijing, a definitive answer may never arrive. Until then, expect further reassessments — and further pressure on China to open its books.

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Sources

1. CNN — "Dr. Ashish Jha on COVID-19: 'It probably was a lab leak'" — https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/02/politics/video/former-white-house-covid-19-response-coordinator-dr-ashish-jha-dana-bash-it-was-probably-a-lab-leak
2. NBC News — "Newly declassified report shows U.S. intelligence community remains divided over likely origin of Covid" — https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/us-intelligence-agencies-remain-divided-likely-covid-origin-rcna90914
3. CIDRAP (University of Minnesota) — "US intelligence agency releases declassified Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 lab leak assessments" — https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/us-intelligence-agency-releases-declassified-wuhan-sars-cov-2-lab-leak-assessments
4. Newsweek — "China reacts to Trump's COVID-19 'lab leak' website" — https://www.newsweek.com/china-reacts-us-trump-covid-19-website-lab-leak-2062843
5. NPR — "Animal spillover? Lab leak? What the science says about the origins of COVID-19" — https://www.npr.org/2026/07/29/g-s1-136142/rand-paul-anthony-fauci-lab-leak-spillover-pandemic-origin

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