Pompeo: ‘Enormous Evidence’ Links CCP Virus to Wuhan Laboratory

An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 17, 2020. Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there is evidence that links the CCP virus to a laboratory in Wuhan, China, the city where the virus originated.

“I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan,” Pompeo said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus, spread quickly across Wuhan and Hubei Province last year, while critics have said the regime’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China before it was transmitted worldwide.

Pompeo declined to say whether he believed the virus was intentionally released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a top-level lab where researchers studied how coronaviruses can transmit from animals to humans.

“There’s enormous evidence that that’s where this began,” Pompeo said of the lab. “We have said from the beginning that this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China. We took a lot of grief for that from the outset. But I think the whole world can see now.”

He added, “Remember, China has a history of infecting the world,” likely referring to the CCP’s cover-up of the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a press briefing at the State Department in Washington on April 22, 2020. Nicholas Kamm/Pool via Reuters

The Chinese regime also has “a history of running sub-standard laboratories,” Pompeo added. “These are not the first times that we have had the world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.”

On April 30, President Donald Trump also asserted that he saw evidence that linked the virus to the Chinese lab. “Yes, yes I have,” Trump told reporters after he was asked about the link.

When he was pressed on the details, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.” Trump also noted it was possible that the CCP either couldn’t stop the spread of the virus or intentionally allowed it to spread.

Last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that intelligence agencies concluded the CCP virus wasn’t manmade or genetically modified, but the agency’s head said it is still investigating whether the virus was accidentally released from the virology lab in Wuhan.

In the Sunday interview, Pompeo also did not say whether he believes the virus was manmade, but he ultimately agreed with the Director of National Intelligence’s report. “I’ve seen what the intelligence community has said. I have no reason to believe that they’ve got it wrong.”

Regardless of how the virus originated, the CCP “behaved like authoritarian regimes do, attempted to conceal and hide and confuse,” Pompeo said during the ABC interview. “It employed the World Health Organization as a tool to do the same.”

The secretary then pointed to Australian and some European countries’ calls for an investigation into how the CCP handled the initial stages of the pandemic.

“I think the whole world is united in understanding that China brought this virus to the world,” Pompeo concluded.