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SC Attorney General, other state AGs request investigation ‘into China’s role in pandemic’

FILE - This undated electron microscope image made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in February 2020 shows the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus causes COVID-19. The sample was isolated from a patient in the U.S. On Tuesday, April 21, 2020, U.S. health regulators OK'd the first coronavirus test that allows people to collect their own sample at home, a new approach that could help expand testing options in most states. The sample will still have to be shipped for processing back to LabCorp, which operates diagnostic labs throughout the U.S. (NIAID-RML via AP)

COLUMBIA, SC (WBTW) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and attorney generals from 17 other states are requesting an investigation into China’s role in the global coronavirus pandemic.

Wilson and attorney generals from the other states signed onto a letter, which was sent Friday to “leadership of the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and other House and Senate leaders asking for a Congressional investigation,” AG Wilson’s office says.

The other attorney generals who signed onto the letter include those from: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.

“Recent reports suggest that the communist Chinese government willfully and knowingly concealed information about the severity of the virus while simultaneously stockpiling personal protective equipment,” AG Wilson said in the letter. “In what Secretary of State Pompeo has described as a ‘classic communist disinformation effort,’ the Chinese government, aided by the World Health Organization, appears to have intentionally misled the world over the last six months.”

“The Chinese government’s mishandling and deliberate deception has caused death and hardship for millions of Americans. Republican attorneys general, as chief legal officers of their respective states, want to hold China accountable for its actions,” AG Wilson also said. “Congressional hearings are critical to our nation’s understanding of the origins of COVID-19 and efforts by the communist Chinese government to deceive the international community.”

According to AG Wilson’s office, “in April, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt became the first in the nation to file a lawsuit against China, citing a ‘campaign of deceit’ on the part of the Chinese related to the outbreak of the pandemic.” Additionally, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced she’d also to file a lawsuit.

Read the full letter hereDownload

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