[burfog]

We won't have a smoking gun unless somebody from the lab tells all, which would involve going to prison in China or claiming asylum in a different country. Such a person might even be ignored unless he provides wikileaks with a hard disk full of lab data.

They were definitely doing more than just "identifying and sequencing the virus in wild bats". They purposely caused bat coronaviruses to become more capable of infecting human cells. It's a cool experiment, but far too dangerous to attempt. One of the modifications was to use the ACE2 receptor. This receptor is found in humans, not bats. The pandemic uses that receptor.