Says he repeatedly questioned Fauci on ‘Wuhan Lab Leak Theory’
By Harry Peterson
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Mike Pence said he repeatedly raised the possibility that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan during White House pandemic meetings, and was consistently told by Dr. Anthony Fauci that it was not plausible.
Speaking in an interview on Fox News, Pence recalled the closed-door discussions in 2020 as the administration responded to the outbreak.
“I lost count of the number of times in the Situation Room where I asked Dr. Fauci if it might be possible that this came from a lab leak in Wuhan,” Pence said while responding to questions during the interview, adding that: “And he assured me over and over again that couldn’t have come from a lab.”
Pence maintained that he remained skeptical of that assessment throughout his time in office.
“I always suspected that Covid-19 came from a lab,” Pence noted.
He also criticized the lack of consequences for China more than five years after the virus emerged, saying: “I’m troubled that we have not held China accountable for a virus that cost the lives of millions of people around the world”.
The comments revive a debate that has divided US officials, scientists, and policymakers since early 2020. At the start of the pandemic, the dominant public position from US health officials, including Fauci who was then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was that the virus most likely spilled over from animals to humans at a market in Wuhan.
Over the last three years, that consensus has fractured. A 2023 report from the US Department of Energy assessed with “low confidence” that a lab leak was the most likely origin. The FBI has made a similar assessment with “moderate confidence.” Other agencies, including the National Intelligence Council, have favored a natural origin with “low confidence.”
Fauci has testified to Congress multiple times that, based on the scientific evidence available to him at the time, he did not believe a lab leak was likely. He has also said it was impossible to rule out any theory definitively without more data from China.
The World Health Organization conducted a joint study with Chinese scientists in early 2021 that called a lab leak “extremely unlikely,” but WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later said the team had not fully examined that possibility and that more investigation was needed.
More than 7 million deaths worldwide have been attributed to COVID-19, according to WHO data, including over 1.1 million in the United States. The economic and social impact prompted calls in Congress for new oversight of high-risk virus research and for greater transparency from Beijing.
Pence, who led the White House Coronavirus Task Force in 2020, has not previously detailed the frequency of his exchanges with Fauci in the Situation Room. His remarks on Fox come as several Republican lawmakers continue to push for hearings and document releases related to US funding for research in Wuhan.
The Chinese government has denied that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has accused the US of politicizing the origin question.
Pence did not outline specific steps he believes should be taken to hold China accountable, but said the issue should remain a foreign policy priority.
