House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy laid out an action plan on Monday to hold the Chinese government accountable for its alleged cover-up of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic.
The California Republican cited eight pillars for “transparency” and “justice” initiatives seeking additional information from Beijing about the pandemic, taking steps to punish China.
“Like all of you, I am deeply angry about the avoidable loss of life, hope, and futures resulting from the [Chinese Communist Party]’s actions. They and their conspirators must be held accountable,” McCarthy wrote in a letter to House members.
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The four points comprising the “transparency” aspect of the plan include introducing legislation to declassify any information about the virus’s origins revealed during President Joe Biden‘s requested investigation on the matter by the intelligence community.
McCarthy also wants to prohibit gain-of-function research in and with China; stop the National Institutes of Health from funding “malevolent” foreign governments, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea; and push the United States to conduct a counterintelligence investigation into the World Health Organization.
The “justice” portion of the plan will seek to continue COVID-19 investigations led by Biden and Congress, pass visa restrictions and economic sanctions on anyone associated with the Chinese government and the WHO, waive Chinese sovereign immunity to let families of people who died from the virus sue the Chinese government, and relocate the 2022 Winter Olympics out of Beijing.
Biden and other world leaders who attended the G-7 summit in Cornwall earlier this month vowed to investigate the origins of COVID-19 in China.
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White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday the administration is not planning to take action against China until there is an “international consensus” and the assessments by the WHO and the U.S. intelligence community are complete.
More than 33 million cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed in the U.S., and more than 600,000 nationwide deaths have been attributed to the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
