Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) joined Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow to discuss his proposed legislation to allow the Department of Justice to investigate China for potential release of a biological weapon reaching American soil.

Entitled the “Stop COVID Act to Hold China Accountable for Coronavirus Pandemic,” Gooden’s proposed bill would amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act to allow the Justice Department to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. The legislation would also grant jurisdiction to U.S. courts over the matter, allowing the Justice Department to file claims against the Chinese Communist Party in America.

Gooden explained, “The bill that I filed on Friday amends the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, which was passed in the 1970s that said you can’t sue a foreign government [and] can’t investigate a foreign government in American courts. This says with exception to bioweapons potentially being released that we can actually investigate — the DOJ can investigate the origins of this virus — and if it’s China that’s responsible for getting it here, then we’ll deal with that.”

Gooden continued, “If it’s an accident and China is not at fault, maybe this really just was some freak nature event — unlikely, but maybe it was — then China still lied to us since day one about the deaths. We were underprepared, because China didn’t communicate how serious this was, and even last week they admitted that the death counts were off.”

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“The Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act … was passed to prevent frivolous lawsuits,” explained Gooden. “It basically said you can’t go and sue another nation in American courts, and the idea was if someone was annoyed with a government of any nation, then our courts would just be full of ridiculous lawsuits.”

International bodies such as the Word Health Organization and United Nations have been corrupted by authoritarian foreign states such as China, noted Gooden.

Gooden stated, “No one takes seriously any international body these days, because they’re infected and taken over by propaganda machines of the likes of China and Russia. So they have no teeth, and the thinking here is the U.S. government at the very least should be able to move forward with an investigation so we can figure out the origins of this virus, and if the facts lead us there, hold [China] accountable.”

Gooden remarked, “One one on the Earth believes the China’s only had 3,500 deaths in five months while we’ve had 10,000 deaths in the last month.”

American news media outlets often frame Chinese state propaganda as accurate information. Gooden observed, “The fact that the left-wing media — even really the non left-wing media, just the media in general — just accept what China says is stunning to me, because I don’t know anyone with a brain that actually believes China is telling the truth on these numbers. Had they been telling the truth back in December when this allegedly all started, then the world would have taken action much earlier. These flight bans would have taken hold around the world, not just when the president put them out.

Gooden recalled Joe Biden calling President Donald Trump’s implementation of travel bans on China “xenophobic.”

Holding China accountable will likely grow in importance as an issue relevant to the 2020 presidential election, predicted Gooden.

“I have to believe that this will be a theme in the election, and a campaign issue between the president, whoever it is, because I feel like Americans are going to want to hold someone accountable. I don’t think they’re going to blame Donald Trump for the loss of American lives.”

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