A longtime Wuhan lab collaborator with ties to Dr. Anthony Fauci has teamed up with the Russian government to suggest hedgehogs could be partly to blame for the outbreak of coronaviruses.

Peter Daszak shared a study analyzing a novel betacoronavirus, dubbed “MOW-BatCoV,” was found in bats captured in the Moscow region in 2015, and he contended that the “spike gene showed the closest similarity” to coronaviruses from European hedgehogs. The paper also insisted that “the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic … is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which is most likely zoonotic.” The study was authored by Daszak and by Russian doctors tied to two Russian state-run universities and to the Russian government’s Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing.

WRAY SAYS FBI BELIEVES COVID-19 'MOST LIKELY' CAME FROM LAB LEAK IN WUHAN

The researcher has long defended his extensive U.S.-funded bat coronavirus research in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China and has long dismissed the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak being the origin of COVID-19.

Daszak spent this week downplaying the revelation that the Energy Department has joined the FBI in assessing that a Chinese government lab leak is the most likely origin of the pandemic. He also touted his new EcoHealth Alliance study, funded by both the Russian and U.S. governments, which sought to link another coronavirus, different from SARS-CoV-2, to hedgehogs and claimed COVID-19 most likely emerged in nature.

That opinion runs counter to multiple reports that revealed the Energy Department also now believes with “low confidence” that the coronavirus started at the Wuhan lab. FBI Director Christopher Wray also confirmed Tuesday the FBI believes the virus responsible for COVID-19, which forced the world into quarantine, "most likely" stemmed from a lab leak in China and not from an animal.

“So little news on COVID origins that a non-story becomes a story,” Daszak tweeted on Tuesday. “The DoE has low confidence in its conclusion. Normally that would not be headline news!”

Daszak steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health to the Wuhan lab and was also an integral World Health Organization-China joint study team member in early 2021, when the group dismissed the lab leak hypothesis as “extremely unlikely." The WHO-China study contended that a jump from animals to humans was most likely, but the assessment was largely dismissed due to a lack of access to key data and Chinese influence over the investigation.

Daszak rejected the lab leak hypothesis in March 2021 when he admitted he took Wuhan lab workers at their word. Meeting minutes from discussions between lab scientists in Wuhan and the WHO-China team reveal lab leak concerns were referred to as “myths” and “conspiracy theories.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The new study touted by Daszak this week was funded by the Russian government and by the NIH and listed EcoHealth and Daszak as the only U.S. author, along with 11 Russian government-affiliated doctors.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus admitted in July 2021 that there was a "premature push" to dismiss the lab escape possibility. Daszak was among those who had made the premature push.