‘It’s only appropriate that we hold the Chinese government accountable for the damage it has caused…’
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said on Fox and Friends that the Chinese Communist Party’s negligence regarding the Wuhan virus “really is the biggest, the costliest, the most deadly cover up in the history of mankind.”
In response to China’s cover up, Cotton and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, introduced a bill on Thursday that would let American citizens sue the Chinese Communist Party for damages related to the coronavirus outbreak.
The bill would amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which currently forbids Americans from suing foreign nations, according to Cotton’s press release.
They introduced the bill as new evidence emerges that the Wuhan virus did not naturally arise from a wet market but that it escaped from a high-security virus laboratory.
He said the world has known from the “very beginning” that the wet-market origin story was “probably wrong.”
Cotton suggested in January that the novel coronavirus likely originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“For one, it appears that they don’t even sell the kind of bats at that market from which this virus originated,” Cotton said. “And two, Chinese scientists in an authoritative study as early as January found that about a third of the early cases had no contact with the food market whatsoever.”
The Washington Post reported in a so-called news article on Feb. 17 that Cotton was repeating a “debunked” “fringe theory” about the origins of the Wuhan virus.
CBS’s Face the Nation invited Cui Tiankai, the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S., on the program to dismiss Cotton’s questions about the virus’s origins as “absolutely crazy.”
Now the Washington Post has reported that State Department officials warned about safety lapses at the Wuhan laboratory in 2018.
The laboratory should be following level-4 safety protocols, which are “reserved for labs dealing with the most dangerous pathogens for which there are few available vaccines or treatment,” BBC reported.
Cotton and Crenshaw alleged that the Chinese Communist Party acted negligently, since it could have warned the world about the novel coronavirus outbreak and taken earlier actions to mitigate its international impact.
“By silencing doctors and journalists who tried to warn the world about the coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party allowed the virus to spread quickly around the globe,” Cotton said.
“Their decision to cover up the virus led to thousands of needless deaths and untold economic harm” he added. “It’s only appropriate that we hold the Chinese government accountable for the damage it has caused.”
Their bill follows the idea of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a 2016 bill that passed without objection in both the House and the Senate.
JASTA lets families sue Saudi Arabia for the nation’s role in perpetrating the 9/11 attacks.
The Holding the Chinese Communist Party Accountable for Infecting Americans Act of 2020 would function in a similar fashion.
If the CCP and the US federal government reach a settlement, then private lawsuits against the government would be dismissed.
If the CCP does not agree to a settlement, then millions of Americans could join the lawsuit.