But he didn’t prove it when in power. He can’t prove it now. But the fate of the world may hinge on the truth. Whatever it may be.

Beijing hasn’t been all that cooperative. From the outset of the pandemic, it has bristled at suggestions that it attempted to cover up a botched response.

Now, more than 18 months after it began exploding through the city of Wuhan’s population, we still don’t know where the coronavirus mutation came from.

No natural source has been isolated.

It’s very similar to a known bat virus. But different enough to indicate it came via another source – such as a Chinese wild-food delicacy, like the pangolin. Or a laboratory leak.

As much hard evidence exists for one case as the other.

At least in Western hands.

And that’s the problem.

Beijing doesn’t only reject the lab-leak idea. It flatly denies that coronavirus came from China. And it won’t permit any suggestion either was the case.

This raises suspicions something is being hidden.

And that brings great power politics into play.

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“We have a really good idea what happened here,” Mr Pompeo declared, rejecting suggestions the Trump administration should have proven their case with evidence. “There is an enormous amount of evidence that there was a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There’s a pile of evidence 100 feet high. I have high confidence that that’s the case.”

But confidence won’t convict in a rules-based court of law.

Not without evidence.

Chasing shadows

The weekend’s Group of Seven international leaders’ summit called for a new “transparent” investigation into the origins of Covid-19.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson put his weight behind the cause. As did Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan and France – as Australia’s Scott Morrison watched on from the wings.

Their communique called for a “timely … expert-led, and science-based (World Health Organisation)-convened Phase 2 Covid-19 Origins study including, as recommended by the experts’ report, in China”.

Beijing immediately rejected the call.

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Covid-19 was first detected in the Huanan Seafood Market. We now know that some 47,000 illegally caught wild animals were sold through such markets throughout Wuhan in the weeks before the outbreak.

Beijing flatly denies this.

But an enticing coincidence also emerged: a major virus research facility was not all that far from the market epicentre.

And it was no secret that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was researching bat-sourced coronaviruses. A quick scan of published research papers revealed that.

But that’s it.

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Only Beijing’s belligerent backlash against any suggestion it was to blame for the pandemic – in any way, shape or form – has strengthened this fear.

Weapon or work?

President Joe Biden sparked renewed interest on May 26 when he ordered his intelligence agencies to report back within 90 days their findings as to whether the pandemic “emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident”.

“The origins of the virus that causes Covid-19 will remain a concern, because nearly a year and a half into the outbreak, the virus has not been isolated from a source in nature, no intermediate host animal has been identified, and China has not been completely forthcoming,” argues US infectious disease and biodefence expert Dr Mark Kortepeter.

He says a lab-leaked Covid-19 could potentially have been the result of three different scenarios. One is legitimate breeding and examination of viruses to understand their functioning and threat better.

Another could have been deliberate alterations for peaceful purposes – such as carrying anti-cancer treatments. Finally, it could have been biological weapons research.

Proving any of these three options – or even simply eliminating the jump from nature hypothesis – will prove near impossible, he says.

“Remember that it took years for the federal government to assemble the forensics capabilities … to make a legitimate attempt to hunt down the 2001 anthrax perpetrator. Despite being armed with reams of lab and human illness data, the conclusion of the anthrax investigation was based solely on circumstantial evidence. No ‘smoking gun’ was found.”

And that’s the scenario the world faces now.

There is plenty of circumstantial evidence for both possibilities.

But that’s not enough to dispel “reasonable doubt”.

“Lacking key evidence from on-the-ground in China and trying to draw definitive conclusions on the origin of Covid in 90 days is herculean at best,” says Dr Kortepeter.

“Short of gaining access to lab notebooks, pathogen repositories, reviewing death registries, interviewing lab scientists, patients and family members of victims in China, this investigation is unlikely to reach any definitive conclusions.”

And that would need Beijing’s co-operation.

Power plays

Mr Pompeo tantalised there was secret evidence just outside public reach. He said the Trump administration “got very close to being able to make a lay-down case for what actually happened”. He says investigators “know enough now” and that the Chinese government “cover-up continues”.

He offered no indication of what that proof was.

The Biden administration last month shut down a Pompeo-instigated State Department investigation into the pandemic. The given reason was internal dissent.

The investigators “quickly became mired in internal discord amid concerns that it was part of a broader politicised effort by the Trump administration to blame China and cherrypick facts to prove a theory,” a CNN report quotes unnamed sources as saying.

Politics are a problem at every level of the Covid investigations.

“The problem is when you make that announcement (Biden’s investigation call) in a highly politicised environment, it makes it even less likely that China will co-operate with efforts to find the origins of the virus,” said Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“This will likely make it even more challenging to extract concessions from China to allow another team to visit Wuhan, or have unfettered access to investigate there.”

That the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has something to hide in Wuhan is highly likely.

Government officials – from party officials to on-the-ground commissars – were involved at every stage. At every level.

And the Party is reluctant to admit mistakes.

Instead, it attacks.

The CCP’s Global Times news outlet says the lab-leak hypothesis “echoes the former president George W. Bush administration’s ‘washing powder’ lie, which was fabricated to legitimise the US invasion of Iraq in 2003”. It was a reference to claims by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin that tests of US chemical warfare evidence revealed it to be soap.

“What’s interesting is that this story rightly conforms to classic Hollywood narratives in movies like Resident Evil and 28 Days Later, which greatly appeal to the Western audience,” it reads.

Establishing motive

That Chinese authorities missed the early warning signs of the Covid-19 outbreak cannot be denied.

Ample evidence exists – particularly the persecution of Dr Li Wenliang, the man who warned the world of Covid’s appearance – of rapid attempts at a cover-up.

And Beijing soon sent in its top propagandist, Chen Yixin, to control the entire containment operation.

Doctors, nurses, bloggers and outspoken citizens were arrested. Local Communist Party officials were unceremoniously axed.

Why?

The outbreak wasn’t supposed to happen.

It didn’t fit the CCP narrative.

The SARS outbreak had emerged from China in 2003. That was embarrassing enough. Admitting a second ‘spillover’ from its wild food markets would have been unacceptable.

By March 2020, Beijing was using its wolf warrior diplomats and an army of social media trolls to push a counter-idea: Covid-19 had come from a United States laboratory. It was spread through Wuhan by a visiting US athlete.

The message was launched into an international environment hungry for conspiracy theories.

“This is like a virus, like Covid, a media pathogen,” Duke University cultural studies professor Kang Liu said. “We have a double pandemic – the real pathological virus and the pandemic of fear. The fear is what is really at stake.”

Politics exploits fear.

Chinese doctors and officials are unlikely to say anything that may bring down the displeasure of the ruling party. It’s a similar story around the world.

But Beijing also went on to counter Canberra’s call for an independent inquiry into the pandemic’s origins with immediate economic coercion.

Things have only escalated ever since.

Now, once again, the Chinese Communist Party is battening down the hatches.

“Is there any possibility that the ‘washing powder’ lie could work again?” the Global Times states. “In retrospect, even Saddam Hussein had never knelt down for mercy. Now that China has made great success fighting the pandemic and outperformed the West, it’s hard to imagine that China would ever flinch when the US tries to make provocations.”

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel