Former State Dept. Investigator Says If China’s Not Asking For Help, They Probably Know COVID-19’s Origins

Former State Department coronavirus investigator Dr. David Asher said Thursday he believed China probably knew the origins of the novel coronavirus.

Asher spoke with anchors Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino on “America’s Newsroom,” and he argued that if China was not actively seeking help from other nations to root out the source of COVID-19, they most likely reason for that was that they already knew. (RELATED: ‘The Chinese Need To Feel The Pain Economically’: Former State Dept. Investigator Wants COVID-19 Commission)

WATCH:

Hemmer noted that Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy had pressed President Joe Biden on the issue, asking what the Biden administration planned to do to get answers — or at the very least, cooperation — out of Beijing as they continued to search for the origins of the pandemic.

He turned the question to Asher, pointing out the fact that he had not received much cooperation from Beijing when he was a part of the investigation and asking what he expected in the future.

“We’ll get zero answers out of Beijing in the future,” Asher replied. “If they were willing to cooperate they would have done so a long time ago.”

Asher went on to say that, in the cases of previous outbreaks, China had actively sought outside help to find the origins of viruses – and their refusal to do so in this case suggested that they already had the answer.

“You would have thought that if they didn’t know exactly where this thing came from they would ask us for help to try to figure it out — and the world community — like they did in SARS, MERS, and the avian flu.”

Hemmer shared a tweet from Josh Rogin, who argued that Biden did not seem willing to put real pressure on China in order to get answers. “Biden doesn’t seem willing to do anything concrete to pressure China to allow a real covid origin investigation. Says China is not really trying to figure it out, but nothing on what he will do to figure it out,” Rogin tweeted.

Biden doesn’t seem willing to do anything concrete to pressure China to allow a real covid origin investigation. Says China is not really trying to figure it out, but nothing on what he will do to figure it out.

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) June 16, 2021

Asher agreed with Rogin’s assessment.

“Unless we adopt a much more coercive strategy, unless we put on sanctions economically, civil litigation and other special measures against the Chinese government’s intransigence, I don’t expect them to offer any cooperation.”