POMPEO: It Was a Lab Leak

The Department of Energy this week announced what many of us have known since the earliest days of the pandemic: COVID-19 leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan.  This new determination is yet another step toward dispelling the unlikely claim – once treated as the gospel-truth by the mainstream media – that the Coronavirus was transmitted from an animal to a human, rather than made in a Chinese Communist Party-run lab.  Getting this right is important for two reasons: First, it will allow us to understand how this pandemic really started and guard against future errors wrought by irresponsible and dangerous research.  Second, we can finally, confidently place the blame for this pandemic where it belongs – on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  The CCP unleashed this virus on the world and covered it up, and it needs to be held accountable for its malfeasance.

It is also worth remembering the mainstream media’s disingenuous, appalling efforts to suppress any credible assertions that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  I made clear as Secretary of State that there was a significant amount of evidence that suggested the virus had leaked from a lab.  Rather than do their job, which was to honestly inform the public about important matters, the mainstream media chose to dismiss our findings as “conspiracy theories.” The Washington Post called the idea “vexing,” the New York Times called it a “fringe theory,” and one ABC reporter stopped just short of saying I needed a tin-foil hat. Even within the federal bureaucracy, there were so-called experts who were uninterested in discerning the virus origins – foremost among them being Anthony Fauci, who called the lab-leak theory a “shiny object.”

We didn’t listen to that noise. Instead, during my final days as Secretary of State, my team worked overtime to deliver a fact sheet based upon our own investigations and intelligence assessments regarding the spread of the virus.  We did not claim to know with certainty whether the virus had leaked from a lab or not, as such a determination would have been impossible to make without access to the CCP’s closely guarded case data and information surrounding the virus.  We simply laid out the facts for the American people and vowed that the United States would continue to pursue a “credible and thorough investigation,” as well as demand transparency from the Chinese Communist Party.

Sadly, the demand for transparency and accountability from the CCP that we pushed for so strongly in the Trump Administration has been sorely lacking from Team Biden.  In the wake of the Department of Energy’s updated determination, the Biden Administration has seemed more interested in throwing cold water on the lab-leak theory than in actually demanding accountability from China.  Honest questions about Fauci’s decision-making have been met with swift denouncements rather than serious inquiry or answers.  Especially in the wake of the CCP spy balloon, this is a tailor-made opportunity for our leaders to put Xi and his cronies on their back foot and turn a global spotlight on the dangerously reckless regime in Beijing.  Instead, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan opted to say there is “no definitive answer” on the origins of the virus, while President Biden himself has yet to weigh in.

This is more weakness from Biden.  This Administration prizes cooperation – especially in the absurd, ethereal realm of climate change diplomacy – with the Chinese Communist Party’s leaders so much that it is willing to be soft on China in nearly every way.  Let’s be clear: Regardless of this Administration’s views on the lab-leak theory, it is in the best interests of the American people (and the whole world) that we find out how this pandemic started and demand answers from the Chinese Communist Party.  If this virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, how can we be sure such a calamity will not befall the world again?  The American people deserve answers – at the very least, the Biden Administration should declassify any information it can that led the Department of Energy to change its conclusion.  Failure to do so will only further confirm this Administration’s shameful reluctance to confront the Chinese Communist Party.