Sen. Josh Hawley on his efforts to hold China accountable for the coronavirus pandemic
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joins Laura Ingraham on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told "The Ingraham Angle" Wednesday he is drafting a bill that would set up an international fact-finding commission regarding the origins of coronavirus and allow affected Americans to sue the Chinese government for pandemic-related damages.
"[T]he Beijing government put together a video, Laura, that called me a liar and called on me to resign," Hawley said. "So I figure I'm on the right path, and we are going to keep pushing ahead."
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"We know the truth isn't that this was just some happenstance occurrence that China didn't know anything about," Hawley added. "We know they knew all about this, we know they suppressed the evidence and we know now it looks more likely than not it came from one of their own labs.
"So let's get the truth and let's hold them accountable for it."
Fox News reported exclusively Wednesday that U.S. officials are increasingly confident that the virus that causes COVID-19 likely emerged from a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as the result of a misbegotten effort to show China's efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States.
"My bill would allow every citizen in this country who has been affected by the coronavirus to sue Beijing, to sue the Chinese Communist Party, to get damages for it," Hawley said.
"That's the kind of accountability we need."
Hawley urged political leaders to find safe ways to get Americans back to work and bring crucial manufacturing and supply chains back stateside.
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"We got to get our economy reopened as soon as we can," he said. "We've got to get American workers back to work and part of that is bringing home critical production, bringing home critical supply chains.
"Our medical supply chain's at the very top of that list, so I've introduced legislation that would secure those supply chains, that would enact new requirements that a certain percentage of our medical needs have to be produced here in the United States and it also would incentivize business to move their production back to this country."
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