Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday night that the world needs to get to the bottom of what happened in China with the outbreak of the coronavirus otherwise it is something that could happen again.

“You actually brought in Chinese representatives to your office on this very topic of blaming the U.S. military and other issues,” Hannity said at the start of the interview. “Can you bring us inside that conversation?”

“We did, in fact, call on the Chinese ambassador, and I spoke to my counterpart in China a couple days back,” Pompeo answered. “This disinformation campaign, which began when we began to call out this risk that was created not only for the Chinese people, but now we can see people all across the world where the Chinese Government knew about this risk, had identified it, they were the first to know, and they wasted valuable days at the front end, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to leave Wuhan to go to places like Italy that’s now suffering so badly.”

“They tried to suppress this information – you talked about the means by which they did it – instead of trying to actually do the work to suppress the virus, which is what the world demanded,” Pompeo continued. “And the Chinese Communist Party didn’t get it right and put countless lives at risk as a result of that.”

“Mr. Secretary, are you – do you believe now that the information – which could be valuable to the rest of the world; we can get information that would be helpful at this point – do you believe that information is accurate that they’re sending over now?” Hannity asked.

“Well, this is one of the most important questions, Sean. We have had an incredibly difficult time getting professional medical people in,” Pompeo answered. “You’ll recall early on we offered to have America’s finest experts travel there to assist them, to assist the World Health Organization. We weren’t permitted in. These are the kind of things that the Chinese Communist Party has done that have put the world and the world’s people at risk. They haven’t been sufficiently transparent, and the risk, Sean, that you find, if we don’t get this right, if we don’t get to the bottom of this, is this could be something that’s repeatable. Maybe not in this form, maybe not in this way, but transparency matters.”

“It’s why when we see them forcing journalists out, when we see people who have been talking about this, Chinese citizens who have been talking about this no longer having access to the internet, no longer being able to speak openly and freely – there’s risk, there’s questions,” Pompeo continued. “And it’s important – as America’s most senior diplomat, we have an obligation to try and help make sure that we get this information from the Chinese Communist Party so we can help our medical professionals here in the United States get this right and save lives for Americans, and for people all across the world.”

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