Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace pressed former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” about the Trump administration investigation of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
Wallace said, “President Trump and his team, including you, had almost a year after Covid-19 first came on the scene, to really press Beijing on what the origins were, when the evidence was much fresher. Now, there’s no question that the president pulled back from the W.H.O., but what did President Trump and his administration — including his secretary of state — do to press China harder to get the evidence on where the Covid-19 virus came from? We still don’t know.”
Pompeo said, “The predicate of your question is all wrong. We have a really good idea what happened here. There is an enormous amount of evidence that there was a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There’s a pile of evidence 100 feet high. I have high confidence that that’s the case. We pressed the Chinese Communist Party really hard.”
He continued, “We made clear there would be real cost of the Chinese Communist Party. We built that Operation Warp Speed. I was thrilled to hear they are going to distribute these vaccines around the world to countries that need it. They couldn’t do that, but for the work that happened on the project work speed, it was remarkable and historic work to put real pressure on the Chinese Communist Party. We got very close to being able to make a laydown case for what actually happened and how this virus came to kill millions of people around the world and destroy billions of dollars in wealth. We know enough now. The coverup continues, and it is time for accountability.”
Wallace asked, “Do you believe that the virus came from a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute?”
Pompeo responded, “I do.”
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