Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would allow Americans to sue the Chinese Communist Party for damages from the coronavirus.
QUICK FACTS:
- Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Michael Burgess, MD (R-TX) proposed a bill last week that would allow Americans the right to sue China for “damages” from the COVID-19 virus.
- “With people finally recognizing that COVID-19 more than likely came from the Wuhan lab — something I raised from the very beginning — it is outrageous that no one has been held to account,” Rep. Smith said.
- The bill would give Americans the right to sue for monetary damages, personal injury, death, or damage to or loss of property after the Chinese Community Party (CCP) tried to hide the virus outbreak.
- “China’s communist leaders knew they had a deadly and highly contagious virus on their hands, and they attempted to hide its origins and imposed their malign influence on the World Health Organization to echo their false narrative,” Smith continued.
- Since 2019, COVID has killed over 1.1 million people in the United States and at least 6.8 million worldwide.
NEW JERSEY REP. CHRIS SMITH ON AMERICANS SUFFERING DUE TO CHINA’S INVOLVEMENT IN SPREADING COVID-19:
“The American people — who have suffered enormously from this virus — deserve to have their day in court to press the Chinese Communist regime on its reckless misinformation campaign, which hampered critical efforts that would have mitigated the virus’ spread and would have prevented so much pain and loss of life,” Smith said.
BACKGROUND:
- The bill follows Dr. Robert Redfield’s testimony during the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that the virus most likely originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
- “Based on my initial analysis of the data, I came to believe and I still believe today that it indicates that COVID-19 more likely was the result of an accidental lab leak than a result of a natural spillover event,” Redfield, who is the former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
- Redfield claimed that several unusual occurrences happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in September 2019, just months before the start of the pandemic.
- “In Sept. 2019, three things happened in that lab. One is they deleted the sequences. Highly irregular, researchers don’t like to do that,” Redfield testified. “The second thing is they changed the command and control from civilian to military. Highly unusual.”
- “The third, which is very telling, is they let a contractor redo the ventilation system in that laboratory. Clearly, there was strong evidence that a significant event happened in that laboratory in September,” the former CDC director added.
