Biden NatSec Adviser Says U.S. Won’t ‘Simply Accept China Saying No’ on Investigation Into Covid Origins

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the Biden administration is pursuing ways to put international pressure on China in order to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

During his interview on Sunday with CNN’s Dana Bash, Sullivan was asked if the United States would take action against China if they keep stonewalling covid investigations. Sullivan said “there are two tracks” the administration is working toward: one is President Joe Biden’s call for an intelligence community assessment on the matter, the other is an international investigation spearheaded by the World Health Organization.

President Biden has rallied democratic partners to say there must be access to China to be able to get the data necessary to understand what happened here. We are not, at this point, going to issue threats or ultimatums. What we’re going to do is continue to rally support in the international community, and if it turns out that China refuses to live up to its international obligations, we will have to consider our responses at that point and we will do so in concert with allies and partners.

Bash asked if this is what Sullivan meant before when he said the U.S. wouldn’t take China’s obstruction lying down.

“Sounds like giving them a lot of time,” she said.

“This is not a question of time, Dana,” Sullivan countered. “First of all, we are in the process of using our own capacities, our own capabilities to begin to develop a clearer picture. Secondly, in order to build the kind of international consensus around this issue that will be required to put additional pressure on China, that takes diplomatic spadework. it’s spadework the president carried forward in a major way at the G7.”

Sullivan concluded, “We are not going to simply accept China saying no. But we will work between now and when this second phase of the WHO investigation is fully underway to have as strong a consensus in the international community as possible, because it is from that position of strength we will best be able to deal with China.”

Watch above, via CNN.

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