Sen. Kelly Loeffler responds to criticism on stock sales amid heated election campaign
Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler tells ‘America’s Newsroom’ investments were liquidated after criticism of pre-pandemic sell-offs and her main focus is helping the state through the coronavirus crisis.
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Sen. Kelly Loeffler on Wednesday asked the Trump administration to push the Chinese government for “significant concessions” in ongoing U.S.-China trade negotiations to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for the “economic and societal hardship” in the country due to coronavirus.
In a letter, first obtained by Fox News, to President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and economic adviser Peter Navarro, Loeffler, R-Ga., urged the administration to “hold accountable those who contributed to this severity of this outbreak in a reprehensible manner.”
LAWMAKERS CALL FOR CHINA TO FACE ACCOUNTABILITY AS SUSPICION GROWS THAT CORONAVIRUS LEAKED FROM LAB
“In January, Mr. President, you negotiated a historic trade deal with China that was a huge win for American famers and consumers. Since then, it has become clear that the Chinese Communist Party has been negligent in the spread of COVID-19,” Loeffler wrote. “What’s worse—they appear to be behind one of the deadliest cover-ups in human history.
“The time has come for the CCP to be held accountable for their role in allowing this disease to reach our shores and spread around the world,” she continued, adding that “it’s time to start fighting back.”
“I am urging you to push the Chinese government for significant concessions in the ongoing U.S.-China trade negotiations,” she wrote. “It’s time to end our dependency on China.”
She added: “Any future agreement should aim to shift supply chains back to the United States, end American dependence on Chinese pharmaceuticals by incentivizing domestic production, ban wet market exports from China, and increase oversight of Chinese biological laboratories that benefit from taxpayer funding.”
Loeffler’s letter comes after Fox News first reported last Wednesday that there is increasing confidence from officials that the outbreak likely escaped from the Wuhan lab, not as a bioweapon but as part of a Chinese effort to show that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal or greater than those of the U.S.
U.S. officials and the intelligence community have confirmed to Fox News that they have taken the possibility of the coronavirus being man-made or engineered inside China as some sort of bioweapon off the table. Sources point to the structure of the virus, in saying the genome mapping specifically shows it was not genetically altered. The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus was a naturally occurring strain that was being studied there -- and then went into the population in Wuhan.
U.S. officials are 100 percent confident China went to great lengths to cover up after the virus was out, the sources said.
Additionally, the sources believe that the World Health Organization -- which the president paused funding to last week over its role in the crisis -- was either complicit in the coverup, or looked the other way.
KUDLOW: CHINA ‘MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE’ FOR EFFECTS OF CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC IN US
There has been speculation for months, not just in the U.S., that the virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory. A February study on the origins of the virus from the South China University of Technology concluded: “In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”
White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow this week also said that the Chinese government "must be held accountable" for the medical and economic damage coronavirus has wrought upon the U.S.
"There is no question of the origin of this virus was in China," said Kudlow before calling the situation "extremely troublesome.
"This will be investigated over a period of time, and we will see how it turns out," he added. "We still have a trade deal with China, but they will be held accountable."
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