After telling ABC News there was “enormous evidence,” he now says maybe not.
Secretary of State Pompeo is leaning even harder into his attacks on the Chinese government over the novel coronavirus pandemic — even as he further walks back his claim that the U.S. has “enormous evidence” a biomedical laboratory in Wuhan, China, is responsible for the outbreak.
The change comes as an intelligence official says there is no signals or human intelligence backing up the idea, while lawmakers press the administration to turn over any evidence.
While Pompeo has said he doesn’t doubt the intelligence community assessment, he has boosted the unproven theory the first human infection came from an accidental or intentional release at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He first told ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday that there was “enormous evidence” supporting that unproven theory, before shifting slightly Wednesday to say there’s “significant” evidence, but the U.S. doesn’t have “certainty” yet.
But in interviews Thursday, Pompeo shifted again, telling a conservative talk radio host, “There’s evidence that it came from somewhere in the vicinity of the lab, but that could be wrong.”
An intelligence official briefed on the situation told ABC News that there is so far no signals or human intelligence backing up the speculation that the lab was the culprit. It also doesn’t appear any person or neighborhood connected to the lab became sick at the start of the outbreak, the official said.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pompeo-tune-chinese-labs-role-virus-outbreak-intel/story?id=70559769