Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin Rejects Russian ‘Disinformation’ on Bioweapons in Ukraine

Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin rejected claims from Russia — which have been echoed by American politicians and pundits — that the U.S. operates bioweapons facilities in Ukraine.

American officials have denied claims from Russia and China that the U.S. has laboratories in Ukraine where chemical or biological weapons could be manufactured while the country is being devastated by the Russian military. White House press secretary Jen Psaki has been among those shooting down the claims.

U.S. officials have warned that Russia could be spreading false claims about bioweapons facilities to lay the groundwork for their own chemical weapons attack.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed on Wednesday that Russia has proof Ukraine is engaging in “an emergency attempt to erase evidence of military biological programs” financed by the Pentagon. Ukraine’s government has denied the accusation.

When Griffin joined Sean Hannity on Wednesday night to discuss the situation in Ukraine, she brought up the bio-labs and explained that the U.S. has long worked with the Ukrainians to “clean up these Soviet-era labs” following the Cold War.

“Those are Soviet-era bio-labs that the U.S. has been engaged in since 2005, in trying to help Ukraine convert the research facilities safely,” she said.

She also said Russia has long spread conspiracy theories about the U.S. Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program.

Hannity said “what exactly [the labs are] for, we never got clarity on,” to which Griffin retorted: “We do have clarity.”

She proceeded to cite a “fact-sheet” from the Pentagon:

That is part of this effort to try to clean up those Soviet-era labs and make sure that nothing escapes from those labs. The U.S. has been very open about its involvement there, but what Russia does is they take that information, distort it, turn it around, and turn it into disinformation. And that is what has U.S. government officials concerned.

Griffin’s explainer comes as she has drawn significant attention for fact-checking claims about the Russian invasion of Ukraine by Fox News opinion hosts. Her latest reporting follows several suggestive segments on the bio-labs by Fox personalities.

Tucker Carlson led his Wednesday night show by saying “If you had told us just 4 days ago that the Biden administration was funding secret bio-labs in Ukraine of all places, we would not have believed you. ‘Yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna put that on TV. No thanks.’ Then if you told us that not only did the administration fund these secret bio-labs in Ukraine, but that they then failed to secure the deadly contents of those labs before the Russian invasion — an invasion they knew was coming, an invasion they helped encourage. If you would’ve told us that 2 days ago, we would have dismissed you as a nut. It was just too preposterous.”

The Fox host continued to mocked fact-checks on the bio-lab story before eventually admitting “maybe it is” Russian disinformation.

While Griffin did not mention Carlson by name, she noted on Hannity that the Defense Department has been working with the Ukrainian government and others since 2005 to safely reconfigure former Soviet labs.

“It is a long program that has existed where the Pentagon has partnered with these bio labs,” Griffin said, rejecting the notion that the labs are some sort of devious plot by the Biden administration.

An hour earlier, Jesse Watters leaped on recent testimony from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, who said the U.S. was working with Ukraine to secure the research materials and facilities that the Russians might be seeking to control. The Fox host boiled down Nuland’s testimony to the singular line: “Bio-labs in Ukraine.”

“Bio-labs. You heard that right,” said Watters. “There has been a lot of talk, propaganda, and fake news regarding this whole thing so we wanted to look into it this afternoon. The first question we had was why are these labs in Ukraine, and what role has the United States played in making that possible?”

Watters then referred to a National Review report describing at least one Ukrainian facility that was permitted to handle several types of risky biological samples. He also likened the situation to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese facility at the center of the lab-leak theory behind the emergence of the coronavirus.

“So these labs are a petri dish of some of the world’s most contagious diseases and they are sitting in a war zone,” Watters said. “You can see why we are a little concerned. And from what we can understand, Ukraine’s level 3 labs are found in Odesa and Kyiv. Guess which two cities Russian troops are closing in on? Odesa and Kyiv. These two facilities could very well be in Putin’s hands in a matter of days.”

Watch above, via Fox News.