Donald Trump Says It’s Time to Hold China Accountable Over COVID-19 Lab Leak

Former President Donald Trump has maintained that China must be held accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic, demanding $50 trillion in reparations over the alleged virus leak from a lab in Wuhan.

Trump was one of the first people to suggest that a lab leak in Wuhan, China might have been the source of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Three years ago, I declared that COVID-19 almost certainly came from the Chinese Wuhan lab. Now, the world is finally admitting the truth. The cover-up of COVID-19's origins is one of the greatest scandals in the history of the world," Trump said in a statement sent to Daily Mail.

He noted that millions of people have died from the coronavirus, and "the cost of the outbreak and the lying about its origins is incalculable, some say in excess of $50 trillion."

He added: "Now it's time to hold China - and the corrupt forces who have facilitated this colossal suppression of facts - accountable for the damage they have inflicted upon all of humanity."

Trump issued the statement a few days after FBI Director Christopher Wray said a lab leak in Wuhan likely caused the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Department of Energy has also concluded that COVID-19 most likely came from a lab leak in China.

"According to recent reports, the U.S. Department of Energy has concluded a Wuhan lab leak is the likely cause of the pandemic. The FBI reached the same conclusion. The facts are now plain for all to see," the former president said.

Trump noted that "China's deceptions and lies in the critical early phase of the outbreak" killed any opportunity to stop the spread of COVID-19 at the start.

"For example, they long insisted to the world that the virus could not spread from human to human. They bought up vast quantities of PPE from all over the planet while lying to other countries about the characteristics of the virus and the severity of the outbreak," the former president said.

"Now that the evidence of Chinese culpability is clear to all, we must hold China financially responsible for unleashing this plague upon the world," he added.

However, Trump said President Joe Biden will not do this as he was "unbelievably weak on China," likely because "his family has received millions of dollars from entities linked to the Chinese Communist Party."

The former president noted that when he first suggested in early 2020 that the coronavirus may have come from a Chinese lab, "it was called 'racist,' a 'conspiracy theory,' and a claim for which 'there is no evidence'."

He said any suggestion that the so-called "lab leak theory" could be true was censored and shut down by the World Health Organization (WHO), media, social media, some public health officials, and Biden, who even discontinued the investigation of his administration into the true origins of the coronavirus.

Trump noted that experts who called for transparency and probe were attacked, while the media mocked the idea and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter labeled posts about the lab leak theory as "disinformation."

Donald Trump Also Wants WHO to Be Held Accountable for COVID-19 Pandemic and Not Just China

Donald Trump said the WHO must also be held accountable. The former president noted that "the WHO, which effectively did China's bidding, fully endorsed the 'natural origin' theory, failed to conduct a thorough inquiry into the possibility that the virus came from a lab, and covered up for China at every turn."

He also said the WHO even disproved to his early China travel ban, "which was proven to be 100 percent correct," as it has "saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the U.S."

"It is clear that the nations of the world are not just owed a massive apology; they are owed massive damages. To collect this compensation, nothing should be off the table - tariffs, taxes, and a global summit on reparations," Trump added.

WHO Report Concludes COVID-19 Originated in Bats, Not Likely to Be Result of Lab Leak

The WHO has been investigating the source of the virus since the first case was reported in December 2019. A joint study from the WHO and Chinese scientists on the origins of COVID-19 said it was likely that it originated from bats and spread to another animal before passing it to the human population.

The 123-page study released in March 2021 also concluded that it was unlikely that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab, which is a theory being reviewed by some experts even though it was based on circumstantial evidence, NBC News reported.

The findings resulted from the joint study conducted in China in February 2021 to investigate the virus' origin. However, critics said the inquiry was insufficient as many Chinese scientists involved were affiliated with government-run institutions. Also, investigators did not have full access to lab records and raw data.

Meanwhile, Peter Embarek, the WHO team leader, previously said the first COVID patient in the world might have contracted the virus while working with bats at a laboratory in Wuhan.

The WHO official revealed that the first case of COVID might have happened while getting samples from bats for research at the said laboratory. Embarek told Denmark's television station TV2 that a lab worker instead of a random villager probably got the coronavirus first as lab workers have greater exposure to bats.

"An employee who was infected in the field by taking samples falls under one of the probable hypotheses," said Embarek, who led the WHO probe into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China.

But despite this claim, the WHO official underscored that the investigators from their organization have not yet found direct evidence of the said narrative.