Pompeo: ‘Enormous Evidence’ Linking Wuhan Lab To Covid Outbreak

The unsubstantiated claim that the virus spread from a lab in Wuhan, China, has emerged as a powerful political weapon as the Trump administration turns to deflecting attention away from claims the White House faltered in its handling of the outbreak and casting blame onto China.

“I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan,” Pompeo said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” though there has so far been no public evidence to support such a theory.

“These are not the first times that we’ve had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab,” Pompeo said.

Last week, the New York Times reported that senior Trump administration officials, led by Pompeo, have pushed U.S. spy agencies to dig up evidence supporting the lab theory even though most intelligence agencies remain skeptical of the lab claim.

Pompeo’s comments come days after President Trump also claimed, without showing proof, to have seen evidence the lab was the origin of the virus.

Still, Pompeo noted that he agreed with the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stating the virus was not genetically modified or man-made: “I’ve seen what the intelligence community has said,” Pompeo said of the statement. “I have no reason to believe that they’ve got it wrong.”