I figured the DOE's "new evidence" was likely a single uncorroborated HUMINT report, but it sounds like it isn't from intelligence collection, but from its own experts within the National Labs. So that's what I'd call "opinion." Opinion without further intelligence reporting should guide future collections. It should describe what questions must be answered in order to increase confidence in the analysis.
I'll preface this with the fact that I've tried to ignore most of the lab vs natural discussion about COVID. I just find it to be a distraction to the situation we find ourselves in with COVID and I suspect that's largely the point.
That said, I worked at a certain national lab for a pretty long time. One thing to realize about the culture is that things change, often fairly dramatically, lab to lab in each Presidential transition. There's often fairly hardened battle lines of "My lab gets more funding when Democrats are in power and your lab gets more funding when Republicans are in power." Politics is often a mine field in these labs. It's not hard at all to imagine someone wanting to prop up a political narrative in the DOE infrastructure because their livelihood basically depends on one party being in power.
@BE Absolutely. I've worked in and with Natl Labs. Their leadership & personnel are as prone to political sway as any other org.