Hey Wait a Minute, I Think I’ve Seen This Movie Before

Today in déjà vu: senior Trump administration officials have been pressing U.S. spy agencies to come up with evidence supporting unsubstantiated accusations that the novel coronavirus responsible for the ongoing global pandemic originated in a Chinese lab, according to the New York Times.

The pressure is reportedly coming from several top Trump officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell, deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, and National Security Council weapons of mass destruction bureau chief Anthony Ruggiero, despite no credible evidence suggesting this is the case. The Times reported that its sources say Pompeo has pushed especially hard for agencies to come up with intel regarding the theory, while Ruggiero “expressed frustration” during a January teleconference that CIA personnel had not yet come up with a link. CIA analysts responded that they had no compelling evidence for such a conclusion.

One former intelligence official told the paper that the White House was “conclusion shopping,” a euphemism for cooking up a pretext on flimsy evidence that in the past has been used to describe the Bush administration’s buildup to the Iraq War and its hunt for “evidence” that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Coming up with an explanation that sounds at least plausible enough to register with the general public could help the Trump administration deflect blame for its disastrous handling of the pandemic in an election year, as well as distract from reports intel agencies repeatedly warned the White House the threat was grave weeks well before it materialized.

Trump is specifically pressing for evidence supporting the conspiracy theory because he wants to blame the Chinese government for the spread of the virus to the U.S., sources told the Times, as well as back his assertion that the U.S. might be able to sue China for damages. (According to the Washington Post, legal experts say any such suit is unlikely to succeed and could easily backfire spectacularly by provoking Chinese retaliation.)

The Times wrote that CIA analysts have failed to generate anything beyond circumstantial evidence and that intelligence analysts have repeatedly cautioned the White House that where the virus came from is a problem better suited for scientists, not spies.

In a statement to the Times, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote that it “will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.” It added that the U.S. intelligence community agrees “with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified.”

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