Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has an unhelpfully antagonistic relationship with the media. Still, Pompeo has a legitimate Intelligence Community foundation for his assertions that a quarantine control failure at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was responsible for the coronavirus outbreak.

That bears noting in light of the media criticism Pompeo is receiving for his comment that there is “enormous evidence” to suggest that the Wuhan lab is the outbreak’s source. Pompeo reaffirmed that sentiment on Wednesday, stating that “people share data sets and come to different levels of confidence,” adding that there is “significant evidence” a lab control failure is responsible.