Agencies

The Chinese government intentionally concealed the severity of the coronavirus from the international community while it stockpiled imports and decreased exports, a Department of Homeland Security report found, according to an administration official familiar with the report.

“China likely cut its exports of medical supplies prior to its January WHO (World Health Organization) notification that COVID-19 is a contagion,” the report reads, according to the source.

The report, which assessed export and import data earlier this year, was circulated within the federal government on Friday, the source said. ABC first reported its existence.

Earlier Sunday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stepped up administration claims that China mounted efforts to hide the extent of the coronavirus spread, including concealing the severity while stockpiling medical supplies.

“You’ve got the facts just about right,” Pompeo told ABC’s “This Week” when asked if China intentionally stockpiled medical supplies in early January while it concealed the severity of Covid-19. “We can confirm that the Chinese Communist Party did all that it could to make sure that the world didn’t learn in a timely fashion about what was taking place.”

Pompeo’s comments come as the Trump administration is formulating a long-term plan to punish China on multiple fronts for the pandemic, injecting a rancorous new element into a critical relationship already on a steep downward slide.

Multiple sources inside the administration say that there is an appetite to use various tools, including sanctions, canceling US debt obligations and drawing up new trade policies, to make clear to China, and to everyone else, where they feel the responsibility lies.

The US-China clash is brewing amid growing suspicion inside the administration over China’s rising strategic challenge and fury that the virus destroyed an economy seen as Trump’s passport to a second term.

The president on Thursday contradicted the intelligence community and claimed he has seen evidence that gives him a “high degree of confidence” Covid-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but declined to provide details to back up his assertion.

Asked about the belief expressed by Trump and if he had seen evidence backing that claim, Pompeo said, “There’s enormous evidence that that’s where this began.”

China’s Global Times, run by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, said in an editorial responding to Pompeo’s Sunday interview that he did not have any evidence the virus came from the lab in Wuhan and that he was “bluffing,” calling on the United States to present the evidence.