Now that I think of it, I DO recall many bullshit spouters, commenters, fringe blogs, "independent journalists," who pushed deliberate release on their little corners of the internet, but who pays them any attention?
First, there’s the question of if it was an accident or a deliberate release
Second, (and on top of the first) that it was a lab-engineered strain or research on a naturally occurring strain.
The fringe sites seemed to overwhelmingly adopt the “deliberate release + lab engineered” theory.
On the deliberate release+bio engineered front: https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/dean-koontz-book-predi...
On the deliberate-release+bioengineered, but walking back the bioengineering, you have Tom Cotton (granted, the NYT editorial stance in this casts skepticism on Cotton) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru...
There was a reasonable level of reporting stating that the wet market theory was one of a few possibilities, and that a leak was possible but couldn’t be conclusively determined.
My takeaway and bias is that we’ll never conclusively know the root cause. It became a blame game. The effort would be much better spent preparing for the next pandemic.