On Monday, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he’s “convinced” that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab and believes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has intentionally concealed their culpability in the matter.
“We know for sure they covered up this virus,” Pompeo said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." “I am confident that we will find that the evidence that we have seen to date is consistent with a lab leak and I’m convinced that’s what we’ll see.”
When asked about whether the U.S. and the rest of the world will ever get the truth from the CCP, Pompeo noted that the U.S. isn't without recourse to put pressure of their own on China to divulge any shred of truth.
“There are many things the United States government could do to impose real cost on the Chinese Communist Party until they come clean about what they know and what they did,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo, however, is more certain of the origin of the virus. Not only does Pompeo believe the CCP played a role in the leak and subsequent spread of the pandemic, he also asserted that they have and still are attempting to cover up the leak.
“The Chinese Communist Party clearly knew they had a problem, they didn’t want the world to know it and I’m convinced they still know they have a problem and don’t want us to know it,” said Pompeo.
Noting that the CCP had gone “completely dark,” he explained that “they wouldn’t take our phone calls, they wouldn’t answer our questions. We sent inquiries, we couldn’t get a straight answer."
“We need to know what happened here,” Pompeo told Fox News.
After the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that three Wuhan lab workers became sick “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness,” more questions in regard to the origin of the virus leak have been raised.
According to the WSJ, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council echoed this uncertainty, saying, “We continue to have serious questions about the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, including its origins within the People’s Republic of China.”
In a May 16 interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, Pompeo shared that during his time at the State Department, “every piece of evidence that we saw throughout the entire time suggested that this originated in the laboratory.”
H/T: New York Post