(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Transparency group Judicial Watch released a new set of internal FBI emails Friday, showing that agents were briefed in April 2020 about gain-of-function research funded by former COVID-19 czar Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The emails show FBI agents discussing their investigation into a grant Fauci’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases gave to EcoHealth Alliance to conduct bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The FBI agents had apparently been briefed by a source with knowledge about what went on at Wuhan, who said that the experiments there could result in a coronavirus that seemed natural.

The source, whose name was redacted, told FBI agents that the experiments EcoHealth conducted at Wuhan “would leave no signatures of purposeful human manipulation.”

One of the FBI agents wrote in an April 23, 2020, email that the briefing included “alarming new info.”

The Newark Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge-National Security Branch, whose name is redacted, then forwarded the email thread to then-special agent in charge of the Newark Field Office, Gregory Ehrie. “This is interesting. I’m following up with the squad tomorrow morning,” the assistant special agent in charge said.

Judicial Watch said Friday that the new emails further demonstrate the need for a comprehensive criminal investigation into Fauci’s gain-of-function scandal.

“These smoking gun documents showed the FBI quickly understood that Fauci’s agency funded the gain-of-function research that could disguise the resulting coronavirus as ‘natural,’” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The FBI was one of the few government agencies to determine that the COVID-19 disease had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The FBI determined that COVID was likely a lab leak as early as March 2020, but suppressed that information until October 2021— keeping former President Donald Trump, as well as the wider public, in the dark.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.