happening now, new fears that russia s war against ukraine is about to get a very serious boost from china. i ll acquit white house national security official john kirby whether beijing is actively considering sending lethal aid to putin s forces. also tonight, a new assessment on the origins of the covid pandemic is stirring up major controversy. we ll tell you why the u.s. energy department now believes the virus likely emerged from a chinese lab. and breaking news, new legal filings in the dominion voting systems lawsuit against fox news. the fox chairman rupert murdoch admitting underoath that popular tv hosts endorsed false claims about the 2020 presidential election. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world, i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we begin our coverage tonight with the war in ukraine. the deepening alliance between russia and china sending chills throughout the u.s. intelligence community. our senior national secur
nicholas burns, adding to this when he said that china will have to do more to explain the origins of this. already, chinese state media blasting him for those comments. wolf? ivan waltson in hong kong. let s discuss this and more with a key member of the house intelligence committee and the ranking member on the select committee on china, democratic congressman, ra gentleman raja christian murthy, how much energy do you give this that covid resulted from a lab leak? it was one of eight to ten assessments, so it has to be taken seriously, but in context of the others, it did come in as low confidence. all of that being said, i think that the committee that is studying this in depth, which is the special select committee on the coronavirus, which is a subcommittee of the oversight committee will continue to look
into this, and they should because we need to know the origins of the pandemic to prevent it from happening again. a million americans have died already from covid, and many millions more people around the world have died, so everyone has to learn the origins to make sure it doesn t ever happen again. do you have insight, congressman, into what new intelligence or analysis led the department of energy to actually change its assessment? i ll be looking at the report later. i can t get into classified details. but obviously d.o.e. came into more information over the preceding couple of months to arrive at this new conclusion. just to be specific, when are you actually going to have an opportunity to look at this report? probably this week. we ll continue the conversation after that, of course. you heard the house foreign affairs committee chairman, mike mccall say he s concerned that the funding from the national institutes of health went to
they have such fragmentary and inconclusive evidence. they don t have a lot of corroboration of reporting. they don t have anybody in the lab itself saying it s definitely happened. it adds up to looking like that, but they can t say definitively it is. the latest report adds to the divide within the u.s. government over whether the virus began with a lab leak or was started more naturally. many in the scientific community believe a large wet outdoor market in wuhan is where the virus started jumping from animals to humans. to me, the scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports natural origins. we know where the first cases of covid-19 appeared in this pandemic, and they re all clustered around a specific seafood market in wuhan. reporter: the chinese government also firing back at the idea that the virus came from a lab leak. translator: the relative party should stop stir frying
the origins of the covid-19 pandemic. our brian todd is digging into this report for us. brian, what is the department saying about the possibility that the virus was leaked from a chinese lab? wolf, the energy department is saying its intelligence indicates that the virus came from that lab. at the same time, the department says its intelligence is far from airtight. reporter: the mysteries surrounding the origins of the virus that s killed nearly 7 million people worldwide growing deeper tonight. the u.s. department of energy in a newly updated classified intelligence report says the covid-19 pandemic likely started from an accidental leak from a lab in wuhan, china. but at the same time, sources tell cnn, the energy department said in that report that it has quote, low confidence in that conclusion. our intelligence analysts beth sanders said what that really means is the energy department thinks the virus came from that lab but admits it could be wrong. low confidence means t