US spy agencies warned Trump that China was lying about coronavirus

The U.S. Intelligence Community warned President Trump in early 2020 that the Chinese Communist Party was downplaying the real threat posed by the novel coronavirus outbreak, which has since become a pandemic with more than 300,000 confirmed cases around the world.

The Trump administration was advised in January and February that Chinese officials “appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak” and “were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis,” according to a report Friday by the Washington Post.