Several conservative media outlets reported on Wednesday that unnamed senior U.S. intelligence officials allegedly withheld classified material suggesting the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory. According to the accounts, signals intelligence collected in 2019 pointed to an emergency at the facilities and genomics experts inside the intelligence community flagged features consistent with laboratory manipulation. The reports assert that the information was kept from both the president and the public, giving Anthony Fauci’s advisers outsized influence over the government’s pandemic narrative while sidelining dissenting analysts. No documents or sources were published to corroborate the claims, and the intelligence agencies, as well as Fauci, have not responded publicly.