U.S. Energy Department assesses with 'low confidence' Covid may have originated from Chinese lab leak

WASHINGTON — The Energy Department concluded with "low confidence" that the Covid-19 pandemic "likely" originated from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, according to a classified study delivered to cardinal lawmakers connected the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, 2 sources with nonstop cognition told NBC News.

Key lawmakers connected the quality committees were briefed past period by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence astir the classified report, the sources said.

The quality was archetypal reported by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

However, 1 root cautioned to NBC News that the DOE's decision was not being viewed arsenic hugely important among the quality assemblage owed to interagency disagreements astir Covid's origins.

A Department of Energy spokesperson told NBC News that the bureau "continues to enactment the thorough, careful, and nonsubjective enactment of our quality professionals successful investigating the origins of COVID-19, arsenic the President directed."

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, connected Sunday called for "extensive nationalist hearings" if the U.S. quality assemblage conclusively determines that Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory.

Asked connected NBC News' "Meet the Press" astir what the consequences should beryllium if the U.S. makes that determination and past discovers it was covered up by the Chinese government, Sullivan said that lawmakers indispensable archetypal "have nationalist hearings connected this and truly excavation into it."

"Think astir what conscionable happened implicit the past 3 years, 1 of the biggest pandemics successful a century. A batch of grounds that it's coming from the Chinese," Sullivan said. 

China has denied that Covid originated from a laboratory leak, previously calling the mentation a "conspiracy."

House Republicans have kicked disconnected their ain investigations into the origins of the pandemic.

The ODNI responded to a Feb. 13 letter from Reps. James Comer, seat of the Oversight Committee, and Brad Wenstrup, seat of the Select Subcommittee connected the Coronavirus Pandemic, requesting "information astir the origins of COVID-19," a spokesperson for the Oversight Committee told NBC News Sunday. The committee is "reviewing the classified accusation provided," the spokesperson said.

The White House referred NBC News to ODNI for comment.

Asked astir the classified study connected Sunday, White House nationalist information advisor Jake Sullivan said that "there is not a definitive answer" from the quality assemblage connected the origins of Covid.

"There is simply a assortment of views successful the quality community. Some elements of the quality assemblage person reached conclusions connected 1 side, immoderate connected the other. A fig of them person said they conscionable don't person capable accusation to beryllium sure," Jake Sullivan said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"If we summation immoderate further penetration oregon information, we volition stock it with Congress, and we volition stock it with the American people," Jake Sullivan added. "But close now, determination is not a definitive reply that has emerged from the quality assemblage connected this question."