Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a no-nonsense guy. Earlier today on “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace,” he minced no words on a direct question about where the COVID-19 virus originated.

If you have not been following the news recently on how the narrative last year — that the COVID-19 virus developed in nature and came from a bat — has fallen apart, you need to be brought up to speed. You also need to bookmark RedState, being as my colleagues here have been on fire with this story. The latest damning report from Jennifer Van Laar is right here. EXCLUSIVE: Defector Provides Evidence That the Chinese Military Orchestrated the Creation of COVID-19 and Lab Leak

From that article…

One week ago we reported that a man believed to be the highest-ranking Chinese defector ever was working with the Defense Intelligence Agency and that he had direct knowledge of special weapons programs in China, including bioweapons programs. We also reported that the defector provided an extensive, technically detailed debrief to US officials, that the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) was able to corroborate very technical details of the information provided, and that in DIA’s assessment, the information provided by the defector is legitimate.

RedState has now learned some details of the information provided by the defector, including that he provided data proving that SARS-CoV-2 was manmade and leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in addition to evidence confirming that the People’s Liberation Army managed the Wuhan program (and others), as Chinese virologist Yan Li-Meng told the FBI last year.

Please make sure to read the whole article to see how damning this is.

Secretary Pompeo possibly would have seen some of this evidence being complied during his time in the Trump administration. Today, he was asked directly from Wallace his thoughts on the lab theory. Here was the brief exchange.

Chris Wallace: So just to button this up, I’m gonna ask you one more question. Do you believe that the virus came from a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute?

Mike Pompeo: I do!

Wallace sat for almost 5 seconds, silently, after the former secretary of state answered, possibly stunned that he received such a direct, unequivocal answer on such a loaded question. No follow-up question was needed with that response.

Normally, a former official will do a bit of a tap dance verbally on anything a bit controversial, to give themselves some wiggle room. Pompeo not only did not do that, but he has also now said that one of our biggest adversaries in the world today created a virus in their lab that shut down this country and killed over 600,000 Americans. That is not something that anyone would say as a throw-away line, and I believe Pompeo would never dream of doing such a thing.

He believes it.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration was on the trail of proving this lab confirmation theory but ran out of time. Now, that the story is being dug into and being reported at places like here at RedState, and even questioned at some MSM sites like Vanity Fair — this is no longer a conspiracy theory. This is simply becoming a cold, hard fact.

When will the Biden Administration respond to this, and how will they deal with it?

I would truly hope that the current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken  would seek the advice of his predecessor and take his advice to President Biden to use.

I am not going to hold my breath for that, though, being as I was never very good at holding my breath.

Also, if you get a moment, please check out my colleague over at Townhall.com, Gabriella Hoffman’s conversation with Secretary Pompeo right here, in an article called “Secretary Pompeo Isn’t Afraid to Make Waves in Politics.”