During a portion of an interview with CBS on Thursday, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe stated that “senior leaders” within the Chinese Communist Party, including President Xi Jinping, “were aware and lied to the rest of the world about what they knew and when they knew it about COVID-19.”
Ratcliffe said, “The intelligence shows that the Chinese Communist Party’s senior leaders, including President Xi, were aware and lied to the rest of the world about what they knew and when they knew it about COVID-19. They made the conscious decision to shut down their economy, to shut down their country, travel in and out of Wuhan, where this originated. But they allowed travel from Wuhan to the rest of the world. They knew that, and they’ve taken advantage of that.”
He also stated that China “has been attempting to access our research into COVID-19.”
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