Republicans Demand Action After Report of “Lab Leak” from China

Today on Sekulow, Republicans demand action after a report of lab leak from China. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome to Sekulow.

We are taking your calls on this 2-1-800-684-3110. It happened after we were on the air Friday. Report comes out. This from the U.S. Department of Energy and their intelligence agency that the COVID-19 pandemic, surprise, surprise, the FBI came out with a similar finding of moderate confidence that the virus spread via a mishap from the Wuhan lab. Lab leak theory being the most likely theory now.

And remember what was said about you. If you believed a theory like that, you were called a conspiracy theorist. Unfounded.

Impossible. I mean, we have a soundbite from Chris Hayes on MSNBC literally saying that a lab leak is impossible. Of course, this is back in 2020 when that was the going talking point from folks like the Biden team and others who said, you know, you're a conspiracy theorist if you happen to believe this. But they went so far as to declare these are not scientists, it would be impossible to have a lab leak. You people are nuts. A lot of people on the right love that phrase escape from the lab because it sounds like something from a Marvel movie or comic book. Both scientists and the U.S. intelligence community agree that this coronavirus was not manmade.

That is not a possibility. Well, the Energy Department now joins the FBI in saying that it likely spread via a mishap at the Chinese lab in Wuhan, which the United States, by the way, gave money to over the years. I think, was it $40 million?

Maybe more than that. So you have right now the Department of Energy, the FBI, and multi agencies now saying likely source. Now, why is this important? It's important because ultimately the Chinese Communist Party should be held accountable for this. And that's where this is going. You're going to have congressional oversight hearings that are going to address a lot of this, Jordan. And that's important. And our friend Jim Jordan said he is going to get hearings to work through this. This is a very important issue.

Look, I take it very personally because I lost a brother to COVID. So I think the Chinese Communist Party, from what I'm gathering, is the responsible party here. There's no question it came from China and no question they gave us misinformation talking about misinformation.

Why Fauci? They were so nervous about blaming China because of their financial interest in China. The financial because it tracked back to them.

Yes. It goes back to them paying for what's illegal in the United States to be done overseas, which is gain of function research, which we're not supposed to be doing here. But they do it over there and then we fund it so it's done outside the United States.

That's how you make these super viruses that then, if not handled properly, end up in the public and very quickly wreak havoc on the world for years. But they all told us from the specialist on down to the talking heads that you were a conspiracy theorist to even consider that. You're not saying, by the way, we're not making the jump that they intentionally did this.

But you could make that jump as well, if you'd like, since it's the Chinese Communist Party. They intentionally hid data. And they would not let the World Health Organization in. So they are responsible.

Legally culpable is what I would say. Our same American actors like Fauci were telling us that it didn't come from the lab anyway, so why didn't they let us into the lab? I mean, it all made more sense that it was the lab, and it's why the Chinese Communist Party was so protective of anybody getting into that lab. I think we've got to be clear what happened here, and that is the culpability issue is who is ultimately responsible for the havoc this caused and the deaths that it caused and the impact it had on our families and our kids and our grandkids and school. And at the end, it's the Chinese Communist Party.

And now it looks like it was the lab in Wuhan, which is exactly what the initial thoughts were. Our government tried to suppress that. The media was complicit. We're going to play a whole soundbite from the media. We've got multiple soundbites on this.

It's bad. It's a horrible situation, and the government of China, which is the Chinese Communist Party, has to be held accountable to this. And I think there needs to be action taken to effect tariffs and trade, and they need to understand there's a price to pay when you bring a pandemic that costs millions of lives on not just the American people, but across the globe. We're going to take your calls when we come back. 800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. Rick Grenell, our Senior Counsel for International and National Security, is going to be with us. He'll know about this intelligence report. He was the DNI, Director of National Intelligence.

Back with more in a moment. Welcome back to Secula. We are taking your calls as well.

1-800-684-3110. We're talking about the news that came out after we were on the air Friday that a second intelligence agency within the U.S. government has concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely came from a lab leak. This time it was the Department of Energy and their intelligence department. First it's been the FBI who came out and said they also said the FBI, the virus likely spread via a mishap at the Chinese lab. This is a huge 180-degree turnaround from, or 360-degree turnaround from really where we were back in 2020 with the Fauci's of the world and the talking heads of the world who told us with certainty, with certainty, that this could not have come from a lab.

This had to have just originated in a wet market in China. It certainly didn't come from the research they were funding with some of your taxpayer dollars, which Congress is investigating now. Rick Rinnell is joining us. He is our Senior Advisor for Foreign Policy and National Security. He was the Acting Director of National Intelligence. Rick, just your overall first reaction to yet another agency within the intel world coming out and saying, you know what, it's likely this had nothing to do with the wet market and everything to do with the lab in China.

Look, they already said this. This is a very confusing mess right now. And I will say this, Jennifer Granholm, the Secretary of Energy, is politicizing intelligence. She needs to get a handle on her intelligence community. She needs to read the April 30th, 2020 intelligence community-wide assessment.

It's clear in that assessment from April 30th, 2020, that the media totally ignored that I negotiated this statement from all intelligence agencies. We had to change verbs. We had to change nouns. We had to change everything in order to get all intelligence agencies to sign off. And the intelligence community concluded that COVID started in Wuhan either in the lab through a leak, which, by the way, they don't believe was on purpose. This is what the intelligence community said. So a mistake lab leak or a lab animal somehow getting transmitted to a human.

And there were differing opinions about whether or not that lab animal was eaten, whether someone touched it, but it all stemmed to the Wuhan lab, either a lab leak by mistake or a lab animal. This is what the intelligence community said on April 30th, 2020. Read the statement.

It's still on the DNI website. So, Rick, let me follow that up because they're saying that they classify these things as moderate confidence, low confidence. But the fact is, even under the low confidence, they said that points to, that all the evidence is pointing to at this point, that this was a lab leak situation. Now, as you said, there's no evidence right now.

As far as your understanding is, without divulging anything, you can't. Is there any evidence pointing at one way or another whether that lab leak was intentional or not, or is that still pretty much unknown? Well, look, I haven't been briefed on a daily basis for a very long time, so I don't want to go out and say where they are. But let me be clear about one thing. The intelligence agencies always have a level of confidence, but they do not sign on to a public statement unless they agree. And so it's very important for people to understand that we negotiated this IC-wide statement. We had different, more confident words that were taken out by some agencies because they said we can only sign on to what we believe. This document from April 30th, 2020, that I negotiated is a signed-off document by the intelligence community.

Why would Avril Haines still have this document on the DNI website? Because it still stands as truth. Rick, I want to ask you this because President Trump said this way back in 2020. This is, again, in March, April of 2020.

He was clear about it, and yet the media, the press, the talking heads would not accept it. Take a listen by 23. We're looking at exactly where it came from, who it came from, how it happened, separately, and also scientifically, so we're going to be able to find out. And my question is, have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus? Yes, I have.

Yes, I have. So we were being told this in plain sight, and so was the media, Rick, and they still would not buy into that theory. They had to go into the theory that this was an accident in a wet market, this was no way it was man-made or created by, you know, created in a lab. No, look, we were fed a line by the media because we were in the midst of an election, let's be honest about it. They wanted to create fear and chaos because they wanted to defeat Donald Trump, and they saw this as a way to start sending ballots to people, telling them to stay home and we'll just send you a ballot in the mail.

That is literally what their strategy was when they saw this. I'm sorry that we don't have enough media in Washington, D.C. to ask Jennifer Granholm what's changed from April 30th. There is only one thing that could have changed, and that is the intent, because that statement is clear that COVID started in China, it started in Wuhan, and it started by an accident because that is what the intelligence community on April 30th believed, that it was an accident. Rick, let me take it to the next step because I look at this thing from a legal perspective on culpability and liability. Here's one thing we do know, an organization I have no confidence in, World Health Organization said China is not cooperating with access and data, that they're keeping that data away from the World Health Organization, which just tells me that this is, as we've suggested, that this is, China's culpability here is clear one way or another.

They are the ones liable for what wreaked havoc on the rest of the planet, and like I said, I lost a brother to this disease. Let me be very clear. We've always known since the early days of COVID, remember I was acting DNI in the early days of COVID when it first came onto our radar. The reality is we always knew that the Communist Party in China was in charge and covering this up. We know this. I can't go into all of the proof and all of the intelligence, but there is not a single person with a top security clearance that would ever say that China did not cover this up very aggressively. And many Americans, many American politicians, fell into their trap, and they had to have defensive briefings by the FBI to say, wake up, you're being used by China during this COVID process.

This is a reality. Anyone with a top secret security clearance will tell you this. I urge people to go to the DNI website and find the April 30th, 2020. I've tweeted it out, the statement. It's very clear Jennifer Granholm is manipulating intelligence, and some reporter in Washington needs to ask her, why did the Department of Energy sign off on the statement on April 30th, 2020, and now you're pretending like something's new?

We had an entire IC-wide agreement about Wuhan. You know, this to me, I think it's very telling, Rick, because, and it does confuse people, because on the one hand we're told this is what we kind of believe, this is the assessment. Then we're told like it's breaking news, the same assessment, and it's the reasoning behind it. I think that's what people try to figure out is, what is the purpose of another agency in Washington saying what the FBI said to the public and coming out yet again? Why, is it that the role of what your job was for people at DNI is to put all these intelligence agencies together so that when they speak, they speak with a voice that is singular, especially on issues that's so huge, not just to the US, but the world? Let me push back a little bit on that, Jordan, because it's incredibly difficult to get an intelligence community-wide assessment. We have too many intelligence agencies that just stick to certain things, for instance, at the State Department or in other places. Those intelligence officials only kind of do, think of it as their cone. So when you ask them to comment on the assessment when it comes to something like COVID, many of them will say, well, we don't monitor that. We're not saying no, it's just that's not something that we can sign off on. We had to be very careful on how we got the intelligence community assessment-wide.

Let me just finish with this. People need to be very sophisticated about the intelligence community. When you see an IC-wide statement that is all the intelligence agencies agreeing, that is a very big deal.

When you see raw intelligence, that's untested. That's something that we don't know is actually true, but somebody might have said something. It can be gossip.

It can be a foreigner saying something that's wrong, but we heard them say it. And so this is the problem with leaks is that anonymous leaks for partisan purposes go to reporters. Reporters report things that are untested, unverified, not IC-wide. To get the intelligence community, IC, to get the entire IC community to agree to something is incredibly difficult. Rick, we appreciate it.

Thanks for being with us, as always. And by the way, U.S. State Department cables written in 2018 and internal Chinese documents show that there were persistent concerns about China's biosafety procedures, which have been cited by proponents of the lab leak theory to begin with, and now you've got the intelligence agencies saying likely. So this tells you something, folks, much different than what the media was saying, much different than what the people on the left have been saying. The Chinese Communist Party is responsible for this.

Whether it was a leak, intentional or not, whether it was a wet market, they kept data from people, this is the problem with the Chinese Communist Party. We'll be back with more in just a moment. All right, welcome back. Just taking a little bit of a change of topic. A good friend of ours is in Nashville today in our studio with us, Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, and Jeremy has a new book out. I think he's authored of a dozen books on faith and apologetics and specifically the New Testament. And this new book, which we've got up on our screen if you're watching, Body of Proof, The Seven Best Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus and Why It Matters Today.

I think for our audience, a lot of our audience who would say identify as being Christian and probably regular if not weekly churchgoers, so pretty involved in their churches, the grassroots community. But you mentioned something as we were talking about this, Jeremy, about proof for the resurrection. Most of us say, you know, this is like a faith. This is part of the faith. And you don't really have to go much deeper than that. If you believe, you believe.

If you don't, you don't. And you've got to have faith to believe. But there is more.

Absolutely. And what I love about your secular radio program is you all follow the evidence. And we can do the same exact thing as followers of Jesus. We follow the evidence. Faith is a response to evidence.

It's not a rejoicing in the absence of evidence. And so I took 150,000 words that I've written from my PhD, studied in Oxford. As you all know, Jay has been a huge encouragement to me in my studies to be a Christian thinker. And we have spun out a book that gives the top seven reasons to believe, the best seven lines of evidence, if you will, of why Jesus physically, bodily rose from the grave.

And here's the cool thing. This will equip pastors, Jay. This will equip Christian thinkers. The resurrection, unfortunately, is understudied. It's under preached. So I'm excited about basing it in evidence, but then giving the reasons why it matters today. But no resurrection, no faith is the truth. Exactly.

I mean, if you don't believe in the resurrection, that is the fundamental. Thank you, Jay. The book is called Body of Proof. I'm holding it in my hand right now. We encourage you to get this, by the way, anywhere you get your books.

Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you get your books. Jeremy, let me ask you this question. Because there's a whole body of theologians that view the resurrection through the lens of higher criticism. In other words, well, we don't have historical proof, so it shouldn't be that central to the faith. And then, of course, the next step from that is basically no faith.

What's the biggest takeaway from the book? The biggest takeaway is the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so well evidenced, it should be the central point of a Christian worldview. Jay, you and your ministry for years has helped us have a Christian worldview. The center point of a worldview is Jesus' physical bodily resurrection. Unlike any other religion or ism in the world, Christianity puts itself to a historical test. I mean, Jordan, archaeology is the closest cousin to Christianity. No other religion can claim that. And so while you all are here looking at evidence for whether it be Wuhan or evidence for this or that, we can look at the evidence.

It is so good. The data is so strong. What's the biggest evidence? The greatest evidence that Jesus physically, bodily rose from the grave. Well, there's seven actually, Jay.

You've got to get my book. But the number one evidence of why we know Jesus rose from the grave is his disciples had experiences of being with the risen Christ. And even secular skeptics will say they don't know what manner this is, but they will not deny with the fact that these early witnesses who did not believe. They were willing to die for it. They're willing to die for it.

They're not willing to die for a lie. Yeah. And I mean, the whole central story of Jesus starts with a virgin birth. Right.

So you've got to believe that. And these tenets. And I think people kind of, again, all of these things, maybe once you become a Christian you think it's bigger about the spirituality, but you do hear it more and more in the faith world. For our audience to know, I mean, there are people preaching this doesn't matter.

Exactly. And they consider themselves preachers. I don't really know what faith they're really selling to people or even trying to convince people on because ultimately if there's no resurrection, it takes away from the whole bigger story, which is that we all go through this resurrection experience at a certain point. Jordan, there's 300 passages in the New Testament on the resurrection. And put that in context, there's only 260 chapters.

There's 300 references on the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament. And you all are attorneys. You all are renowned attorneys. You're published.

You're peer reviewed. Here's one of the arguments you guys might enjoy from the book. If Christianity was an invented religion, if they were making up the story of Jesus coming back from the dead, guys, they did a terrible job of it. I mean, if we just go back, because of our historical distance, we don't realize we would never, ever say females were the first witnesses of Jesus's resurrection. We would have them appearing to the Roman governors and the Jewish high priests. But why does the gospel unfold the way it does the whole juridical procedure of Jesus? Because that's what exactly happens. You know, it's interesting because we have been talking about evidence today on the broadcast. We talk about evidence every day.

You said there are seven major factors. Right. So we've gotten one.

What's the next one? So Jesus Adam braided it. He foreshadowed. He showed he had power over resurrection. Jesus messianizes Hosea 6, 2, and 3. And he says, in me you will be raised from the dead. Number three, Jesus demonstrated resurrection power. So he not only said that he was going to die and rise again, that's Mark 8, 31, Mark 9, 31, Mark 10, 33, and 34, he demonstrated resurrection power.

There's an original contribution in my new book, Body of Proof, and I actually published this originally, Jay, in a textbook that, praise God, is used in state schools, if you can imagine that. There is no psychological—and you all are thinkers when it comes to this issue as well—Judaism is a coherent religion. And so the original contribution to knowledge is there is no psychological motivation for the early Christian movement to invent a resurrection narrative.

Why? They didn't need it. They didn't need it. Judaism is coherent. Judaism believes in a general resurrection someday in the future. They could have honored Jesus as a great rabbi or teacher. Instead, they come up with this terrible talking point of Jesus physically, bodily rising for the dead. Nobody believed in resurrection. I mean, it wasn't in the zeitgeist of the day.

It certainly wasn't in the entertainment, Jay, like ours today. And yet they said this is how it happened because it really did. You have a whole discussion on—I did a book on Jerusalem as the biblical, legal, and historical evidence as the capital of the Jewish people and that there had been a consistent presence, sometimes very small, 40 people, 30 people, sometimes tens of thousands, millions, in Jerusalem throughout Jerusalem's history. Now, you devote an entire chapter to the archaeology because I use the archaeology in my defense of Israel, Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. Tell us about the archaeological findings. The archaeology of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so strong, we can pinpoint the date.

Are you ready for this? Of the crucifixion and resurrection, we have two options. It's either April 3rd, that's the day of the crucifixion, the resurrection would be April 5th, that would be A.D. 33, or it's April 7 for the date of the crucifixion, and then April 9, A.D. 30.

And so you have two different options. The resurrection archaeology in the chapter that I give gives you the latest evidences. As you guys know because you go to Israel all the time, I know you've represented the Knesset and you do so much for the land of Israel and that's why I praise God for ACLJ. It's fascinating when you look at the historicity of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the spot. It's fascinating to me. But here's the problem, Jay, and why I love your show, you create and replicate Christian thinkers. Most people listening to us right now, they couldn't offer one reason beyond Sunday school of why they believe Jesus physically bodily rose from the grave. As Jordan pointed out, pastors aren't preaching this. The resurrection is under preached, it's under studied, and yet every sermon in the book of Acts has the resurrection. All right, the book is Body of Proof, the Seven Best Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus and Why It Matters.

It's by Jeremiah Johnston, who of course is a good friend of ours. I also need to say something here. Jeremy's dad, who's been a very good friend of ours for a long, long time, has had a health challenge. And I would just encourage you as he is healing from that to pray for his dad, Jerry is his name. Just lift that up to the Lord because it's a health challenge.

I believe they'll be victorious. But prayer is critical, and that's as important as anything else we're talking about today. In fact, more important. And again, the book is Body of Proof. It's available wherever you get your books. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever you get your books.

Published by Bethany House. Great having you on, Jeremy. Jay, thank you. Jordan, thank you.

Thanks for being here. So, Body of Proof. You can go pre-order today. It'll be out in two weeks.

Places like Amazon or wherever you like to get your books. Body of Proof, again, by Jeremiah Johnston. Check that out. We'll be right back. Second half hour of Sekulow coming up. And now, your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

Back to you. We're going to be joined by former Secretary of State and CIA Director, Mike Pompeo. So, you heard from Rick Grenell, who's on our team at the ACLJ.

Mike Pompeo, also on our team at the ACLJ. About just why we're hearing about another intelligence agency, this time through the Department of Energy. Why a leak, again, of another intelligence report to the media saying that COVID came from a lab. When, in fact, the FBI has come to that conclusion. President Trump, while still in office, came to that conclusion as well. But it was never enough for the media.

We'll take your phone calls in a minute, but I do want to play some more of this sound because this is Dr. Fauci. May of 2020. Just, again, the idea here is, like, it is impossible that this came from a lab by 21. If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, it's very, very strongly leaning towards this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated. The way the mutations have naturally evolved.

A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that evolved in nature and then jumped species. So that was that assessment is that it could be that we was asked. So that's the other bite we had. Do we have that bite?

Ready to go? Then he was ultimately asked, well, are you sure? They always hedged. They did always hedge. Not the media figures, though. Not the talking hedge. You were a conspiracy theorist if you believed it was a lab leak.

And here's Fauci that later on when pressed on it. So I wanted to ask, are you still confident that it developed naturally? Oh, I'm not convinced about that. I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China. So there you go. I mean, this idea, we know that the Chinese are never going to allow full investigation.

So we're going to have it. After talking to Rick, I think we just have to take that take that as it is. Take what we're going to know as it is to know that most of this is going to come from assessments.

And then you'd have to then kind of rank the assessments in belief. But what it's now pointing to is that most assessments are pointing to this not having anything to do with the Webb lab, but all of it originating in Wuhan at the lab, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This was somehow man-made. Was it put into an animal that got, you know, bits of wood and got through with the lab or somehow delved into there?

All of that, again, points to still the fault lying with either gross negligence or worse with a Chinese Communist Party-run research lab that was getting money, unfortunately, from the U.S. government. So we're going to continue to take your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Daniel in California quickly on Line 1. Hey, Daniel. Hello.

My name is Daniel. I'm calling from California. Thank you, guys, for your work at the Supreme Court. With the latest updates regarding COVID leaking from a Chinese lab, Chinese spy balloons, Chinese buying land near military bases, and secret Chinese police stations scattered throughout everywhere, and China now possibly sending weapons to Russia in the Ukraine war, and possibly sparking a bigger war in the future, I want to ask the ACLJ, what is the ACLJ going to do and push forward for the GOP-led House to do in regards to CCP in China? So I think that you pointed out correctly, we have a GOP-led House. Unfortunately, we don't have a GOP-led House and Senate. I will tell you, as we've been in discussions, I can't get into all the detail with the everybody on live broadcast with members of Congress on how the ACLJ can use its investigative arm, of course, in attorneys, to do more work about the liability and culpability of the Chinese Communist Party. So that's what I can tell you is that we've been in discussions on that since this new majority even took the House of Representatives.

Now it's kind of working through that we have the House, but we don't have the Senate, so we can't be Congress-wide in the best approach there. So know that we're working on the ACLJ. Some of that stuff we just can't share publicly yet because we're not at the point to do so. But you know when we are, we will let you know. But I do want to let you know we are in those discussions as we speak now and have been in those discussions for a few months.

Go to ACLJ.org, support the work of the ACLJ. When you come back, and we come back, Mike Pompeo. All right, welcome back to The Secio. We are joined by former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Senior Counsel for Global Affairs at the ACLJ. I want to get right into this, Secretary Pompeo, because now we've heard from a second intelligence agency within the U.S. government, the Department of Energy, and this is coming out in an interesting time too about reasons why, but has concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic stemmed from a lab leak and that came from their intelligence sources. That kind of follows the FBI that came to a similar assessment, which was very different than what we were being told by the government and a lot of talking heads in the science world early on that said it was basically impossible. What's your reaction to the news of this latest DOE assessment?

Well, Jordan, they're getting close to getting right. As I have said since, I think it's March of 2020, the almost certain location that this virus began was in the laboratory, the WIV laboratory in Wuhan, China. I think that the Chinese Communist Party government knew about this since at least the fall of 19, and they covered it up in all the ways that we seem to have forgotten, but to have the Department of Energy come out and say that it's good, the State Department under my leadership made a lot of the evidence available in the public. It is pretty clear, Jordan, that while nothing gets certain with respect to this because the Chinese covered it up, it is almost certain that this virus began in the laboratory in Wuhan, China, and then was sent around the world at the direction of Xi Jinping. You know, Mike, you tweeted out yesterday that there was always enormous evidence that the Wuhan coronavirus leak from the Wuhan labs you just discussed, and I'm glad the Department of Energy recognizes reality. It's past time to make the CCP pay.

I have been saying that same thing. We have a trade situation with the Communist Party of China. They own a lot of U.S. debt. They wreaked havoc on the United States and the rest of the world for that matter. Making them pay looks like what, in your view?

What would that look like? That's a very important point. It's hard to put it in isolation, but think about the lives lost and the billions of dollars destroyed, not only here in the United States, but around the world. The Chinese Communist Party should be on the hook for that. There are mechanisms by which you know this. You've litigated things much, much like this before with the ACLJ. I'm sure you guys are thinking about it now, too. There are tools to do that, but it first and foremost takes a U.S. government that is prepared to do what I talked about in that tweet, which was lay out the evidence publicly, the things that we know about how this escaped from the lab.

There is a compensation mechanism. There are tools that we can impose real costs on them. The Biden administration made an enormous mistake by reentering the World Health Organization, the very international group designed to prevent pandemics that came out and said the Chinese are doing a great job.

It seems like so long ago. They said, hey, Xi Jinping is doing a great job. Well, millions of people now have died as a result of the decisions that the Chinese Communist Party leadership made. You know, I just want to follow up on that if I can, and that is when you all were in office, I had conversations dealing with this issue of compensation to the United States and like you said, the rest of the world for the havoc that this brought.

And there were multiple mechanisms which can be utilized in international tribunals, among other things, that could have really had an impact on this. This administration, Mr. Secretary, doesn't seem to be so interested in that. Now, hopefully we get a new administration in a couple of years. It's not too late. There's no statute of limitations issue here. Would you take direct action if you were calling the shots on this?

100%. It's decent, it's moral, it's right. It will also benefit the world and the American people by reducing the risk that this will ever happen again. We should forget, Jay, that lab that we're all talking about seems like history. It's still open. It's still engaged in the same kind of research. I hope there's no American money, as it appears that there was, to do gain of function research there. So I hope we've gotten smarter about that. I don't know what the State Department is doing. But the reason one goes after this, the reason that you want to make clear that the Chinese Communist Party has to be held accountable is not only to recompense those who were harmed, but to deter them from doing this again. They're still at it. They're still engaged in these programs.

It is just a thread in the cloth, right? They flew a balloon over us. You could go through the list. Chinese Communist Party presents a real danger and we have to hold them accountable on every front. Now, going to that, I want to switch to China and their role in Ukraine. So they put out a 12-point peace plan. We are continuing to send military aid to Ukraine, but we have seen nothing like that from the U.S. government publicly, at least a plan to how would this come to a conclusion. But what do you think about and how the world is viewing, I guess, China's attempt at being a peacemaker, if you will, and trying to be a major leader on the world stage?

You sound appropriately skeptical there, Jordan. Look, this peace plan is no more than a Russian propaganda document. It calls for an immediate ceasefire, gives Putin the time to rearm, rebuild, and to continue his efforts. The Chinese are not remotely serious at this. And worse, this iron triangle between Russia and China and Iran now appears to be strengthening.

Weapons going back and forth, energy being transferred from these places. The three of them decided that they, you know, 150 plus countries around the world, they have two friends apiece, and that is real risk. The Chinese Communist Party is greenlighting Vladimir Putin's destruction of the nation of Israel. You have up on aclj.org a piece called Biden's weakness on full display after a year of Russia's war on Ukraine and it's not getting any better. The truth is it's not getting any better. You ran the CIA too, so you've got a wealth of knowledge here in addition to being Secretary of State.

Where does this go in the next six months or a year? Jay, the other thing I have an advantage of is I did get to spend time with Vladimir Putin as well. If we continue, my point was, and by the way, there are many conservatives that disagree with me. I just think we've got to bring this war to an end and there's only one way to do that. And that is to give the Ukrainians the tools that they need to be successful in the absence of that. If we if we dribble them out, if we provide them slowly, if we think about it for a year because we're afraid we're going to provoke Vladimir Putin, then I fear that a year from now we will be sitting looking at something that looks like World War One.

It will be a stalemate. More innocent civilians killed in Ukraine. That's bad. Vladimir Putin is still in control of Ukrainian territory and feeling like time is on his side.

That's bad. But most importantly, for the United States and the people here, you'll still have all of the ramifications that we can see so plainly now. Last, Xi Jinping's watching this one, too.

If a year from now America continues to just provide piecemeal assistance, I promise you Xi Jinping will see that as a green light to act in the South Pacific and against Taiwan as well. The last thing here, and that is going on to a domestic front for a moment. And that is this the way the country is operating right now reminds me a lot of people want to remember this, but I do. And that is the Jimmy Carter years. It just has that malaise. Stock market erratic, inflation high, unemployment low, which is good that unemployment's low, but job payment, job salaries are not keeping up with inflation when it's up at 8 percent. There is this general sense of frustration.

I mean, I saw a majority of the Democrats polled do not want Joe Biden to run again. So politically, how do we recharge with optimism going forward for the generation that's behind us? The good old fashioned way. I'm convinced. We're going to figure this out here in America.

I've been out all across the country last year and a half. People are fired up. People get that their kids are being tied garbage in schools and they are taking back control. Parents are taking back control.

I've seen folks do this in their churches and their synagogues all across America. They're saying we're going to go restore the greatness of America from the ground up. That's how we do it.

That we've always done it. I'm convinced that there will be leaders, not just folks that run for President or Senate, but city councilmen, district attorneys, school board members all across the country who say, yep, we're headed the wrong direction. We're going to go fix it. They'll take it on their own shoulders and the American family will be stronger as a result of that. Our faith communities will be, and America will get back to the right place. I'm very confident of that, Jay. Yeah, very good.

As always, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Senior Counsel for Global Affairs. Great insight. Great to have you on the team. I want to go to your phones, folks. 1-800-684-3110 to talk to us on the air for you to weigh in. That's 1-800-684-3110. Michelle is calling from California online too. Hey, Michelle.

Hi, thank you. I have a comment and a question. So the comment is I think everyone with half a brain thinks that COVID originated from the lab. And I do think that it's out there's responsibility as well. And my question is why is this coming out now?

Because we already don't trust the FBI. They knew this information before. So what's going on?

I think here's what's happening. The consensus of the intelligence, and this is kind of what Mike and what Rick said, there's a consensus now with the intelligence community. And what's happening is it's getting leaked out in these like, you know, energy, FBI, and it's now they're going to have to get in control of this. Because even CNN and MSNBC are having to cover this.

And based on what Rick was saying, that's extremely rare because most of the time they have their specific area that they're focusing on intel. So that they're all coming to agreement, but all starting at different points. So they'd all started at different, why is DOE involved? Why is FBI involved?

Why would another agency be involved? So they have a different starting point, but they're coming to the same general conclusion. Which is a totally different conclusion than what the administration and the experts, it was really the experts that have been trying to tell us. And the demeaning of people, you know, calling them conspiracy theorists to believe that this could have been created in a lab. That, again, it never made any sense to me other than just to divide the country and play COVID politics. Which was always, to me, and still is, pretty disgusting to play politics with something that was so deadly that originated in China.

In the Chinese Communist Party. We'll be right back on Secular. Welcome back to Secular. We're taking your calls as well.

1-800-684-3110. I want to play the sound because it's been quite a reversal in the media. And even the questions they have to Republican members of Congress. Take a listen to Chuck Todd talking to Dan Sullivan from Alaska. If our intelligence community over time determines, this is the majority view and it's the U.S. government's view, that this was a lab leak in China and that government covered it up, what should be the consequences? Well, I think we need to have public hearings on this and really dig into it. Think about what just happened over the last three years. One of the biggest pandemics in a century. A lot of evidence that it's coming from the Chinese. And when other countries even raise it, like Australia, the Chinese use their coercive economic activities to shut people up. But NBC was using its own channel to shut people up in America. Correct.

And name calling. So Chuck, yes, very tough there. What are we going to do now? Well, maybe if we hadn't spent three years saying it wasn't, then we'd have a little bit more evidence left over. And we forced the, you know, World Health Organization in.

If we forced inspectors in on China and said, you know what, if you don't allow inspectors in, that debt, you know, you've got all the U.S. Good luck. Right. Or we're not selling you this. We're not buying you this.

Whatever. We're saying this way. But we didn't do any of that. And NBC itself didn't do any of that. This is their other host just two years ago.

I guess you would have said this, Joy Reid, to Chuck Todd, to even a question like that by 31. Just weeks ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci rejected the conspiracy that coronavirus was manmade in a lab in Wuhan, China. And yet this week, Donald Trump is still pushing the debunked bunkum.

The debunked bunkum, except now the FBI, the FBI and the Department of Energy said it is likely that this was created in a lab in Wuhan, China. Now, there are consequences for this, folks, and you can't just give them a free pass. And this administration is giving a free pass and the media, let's focus on that for a moment, should be embarrassed. And it doesn't – and MSNBC, although Chuck Todd is now sounding high and mighty, well, this is very serious. If this was an intentional act or even an unintentional act in a Chinese lab, different than what we thought before, and then, you know, Congressman Sullivan rightly says we'll do oversight hearings, that's all great. But MSNBC and NBC were peddling this, saying that anybody that questioned it was engaged in, you know, tinfoil hat stuff. Yeah, they're peddling Chinese propaganda.

You play Chris Hayes 2. I mean, this was all in the same month. This is May of 2020. A lot of people on the right love that phrase, escape from the lab, because it sounds like something from a Marvel movie or a comic book. Both scientists and the U.S. intelligence community agree that this coronavirus was not manmade.

That is not a possibility. Okay, these guys, they're all wrong, these reporters. Well, here we had doctors.

This is, again, on MSNBC, same month, same year, all in May. This is from a doctor, so it must be true, by 24. There are virus hunters out there that have looked at what's the most likely cause, and there's no debate here. Among serious people, there is no debate. This was most likely what we call zoonotic disease.

It went from animal to human, likely in a market in Wuhan. It's not uncommon. Well, Dr. Vin Gupta, interesting statement. He called it a— No debate. No debate, no way this could be.

People are chasing this down. They're all wrong. You never want doctors to say no debate, is it? And by the way— I don't even know what kind of doctor he is. It doesn't matter.

But, you know, I think there should always be options to doctors. Now, here's the problem. The media was promoting this. Yeah, I don't— We can't even discuss it. Maybe—and by the way, what did the media have to gain by trying to protect the Chinese Communist Party here? That, their business interest in China.

That's what I don't understand. Right. The bigger NBC financial interest in China, which is bigger than their news department. Yes. You know, keeping sports on, keeping their Marvel movies. People talk about Marvel movies. I think Chris Hayes is talking about making sure those get played. Yeah. And there was a lot of backlash by the American people. Ask John Cena about it when he started speaking in Mandarin in those ads. This is during COVID.

It did not play well. So now I think they're going to try to make a reversal like this to ever happen. Well, they're already doing that. I think the problem is, we know what—look, we have two people on our staff. One was the former Secretary of State, head of the CIA. The other was the former Director of National Intelligence. They said this has been known for years. For years.

Yeah. The problem with this administration is they do not want to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable, and they have complicity in the media. And the media covered this up with them. And anybody that questioned it—like I said, why would the media care if it was in a lab or if it was in a wet market? What difference would that make to the media?

What you should be doing is just finding out what the options are, what's legit. But they went on a rampage to say, oh, no, there is no way, there's no evidence. I'm going to play that doctor's statement again because I'm going to tell you something.

This, to me, sums up the problem with the mainstream media. There are virus hunters out there that have looked at what's the most likely cause, and there's no debate here. Among serious people, there is no debate. This was most likely what we call zoonotic disease. It went from animal to human. Zoonomic disease sounds really impressive. Virus hunters are looking at this.

No debate. Serious people, because if you question this, you're not a serious person. That's like when somebody calls themselves a public intellectual. They're a public intellectual.

Okay, let me tell you what this is. Media complicity in a pandemic that harmed the United States significantly, wreaked havoc to families and kids with schoolchildren, families that lost loved ones around the globe, not just the United States. So now my question is, okay, so now the FBI and the Department of Energy said, eh, maybe this, yep, most likely this was from the lab that the United States funded, by the way, so that's part of it.

Anthony Fauci is saying there's no way that's correct. You know, I don't know why they were protecting China so aggressively in all this, and they still are. That's like letting a balloon that is a spy device traverse the entire of the United States and then shoot it down when it's over Hilton Head after it's already gotten all its data and sent it back to the Chinese party.

That's aggressive. And then don't worry, they're going to go up and they've got three unidentified balloons, which literally were balloons, and they shot those down too. This is what's happening when you've got this kind of leadership in the White House. Does anybody listening to this broadcast think for a moment China's going to be held accountable for this under this administration? I don't, but I am encouraged that Jim Jordan and our friends in Congress and Oversight are going to get to the bottom of some of this. Yeah, I mean, the issue is, as unfortunately we don't have a Republican House and Senate, so we don't have a unified Congress to push back. There would have been some action then, we know.

Yes, I alluded to that for people on the broadcast. So we've had to rework kind of the strategies when it... Well, the strategy was going to be we were going to have a special select committee, there would have been outside lawyers involved, and you would have gotten to the bottom of a lot of this. With subpoena power. Yeah, the House has subpoena power, these committees have subpoena power.

But again, when we talk about elections and consequences, there is this idea on the left of protecting China. I would like to bring these doctors, why don't we offer these doctors a moment to come on the air here and discuss it, what they're saying. See what they say, oh yes, we still think it's not possible. And I'd like to also, you know, let's get Chuck Todd on here, because this is what you really have, that's the problem with all of this. You want to play to Jonathan? No.

No, okay. Yeah, it's just the nastiness of everything combined. Now, we can all be nasty too.

I think it's a learning lesson for media, conservative media too. You can name call you what's this. Remember they were censoring the Facebook and all? It's happening today as we speak, we know it's happening to our YouTube account right now.

We do? Yeah, because we put Lab Leak in the title. So they're already flagging it?

They're still flagging it, I think it's not new, they're still flagging Lab Leak. Again, because they have financial interests that are bigger than the truth in China. These companies. Oh, obviously, and that's what we're doing. We can hold China accountable, folks.

Including most of the media outlets. We can hold China accountable, support the work of the ACLJ, because we're going to get to the bottom of this. Whether we have to do FOIAs, whether we're working with Congress, whatever it is, we're going to get involved. ACLJ.org, that's ACLJ.org. Also, stay engaged with us on all of our social media, and you do that by going at Jordan Sekulow, at Jay Sekulow, excuse me, at Logan Sekulow, and at ACLJ. And it's on TruSocial, of course, Rumble, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, wherever you have your social media, ACLJ is there. We encourage you to stay engaged with us that way. We have a lot more coming ahead tomorrow on the broadcast. Have a great day.