The U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month that the State of Missouri's lawsuit originally filed in 2020 against China seeking damages for the communist regime's culpability over the COVID-19 pandemic could move forward. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey explained to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck Monday precisely how the Show-Me State intends to exact its retribution and made clear that retaking American farmland is part of the equation.

"We're going to win," said Bailey.

Court documents indicated that the state's position in Missouri v. China is that the communist nation "is to blame for COVID-19. In its view, negligence led to the virus's escape from the laboratories at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. From there, the Chinese government allowed the virus to spread all over the world and engaged in a campaign to keep other countries from learning about it."

Blaze News previously noted that besides likely manufacturing the deadly virus and failing to contain it in a lab with a history of hygiene problems, Chinese authorities delayed warning the world about the emergence of the deadly disease, going to great lengths to silence whistleblowers like the late Li Wenliang, who tried to raise the alarm. When the regime finally got around to alerting the World Health Organization on Dec. 31, 2019, China claimed, "The disease is preventable and controllable."

While burying evidence of the virus and its origins, destroying lab samples, and denying sample requests from other countries, China also apparently began stockpiling personal protective equipment, such that when the world discovered what was really unfolding, there was a scarcity of medical equipment and masks.

Missouri hammered China with a number of claims in its initial complaints, but the Eighth Circuit appeals panel decided only one claim — which fell under the "commercial activity" exception of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act — could proceed: namely that China hoarded PPE.

"Missouri's overarching theory is that China leveraged the world's ignorance about COVID-19," wrote Judge David Stras in the ruling. "One way it did so was by manipulating the worldwide personal-protective market. Missouri must still prove it, but it has alleged enough to allow the claim to proceed beyond a jurisdictional dismissal on the pleadings."

'That's how little the Chinese communist government thinks about these United States of America.'

"We filed a lawsuit against China and the Chinese communist government asking for $25 billion — with a B — dollars in restitution and remediation for the damage they caused the Missourians by unleashing the COVID pandemic on the United States of America and then hoarding and withholding the PPE needed for the state to respond to the crisis," Bailey told Beck.

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A previous effort to hold China accountable, Republican Texas Rep. Troy Nehls' 2023 "China Lied, People Died" Act (H.R.566), estimated that "the cover-up of COVID-19 by the ... Chinese Communist Party has caused significant economic harm around the world and has cost the United States economy $16,000,000,000,000."

Bailey noted that the trial for Missouri v. China kicks off in earnest today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, adding, "We are going to win."

When pressed by Beck on the basis for his optimism, Bailey said, "It helps when the other side doesn't show up."

Politico previously noted that neither the Chinese regime nor any other defendant, such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, has responded to the case in court.

"That's how little the Chinese communist government thinks about these United States of America," continued the state attorney general. "They won't even participate in a judicial process."

While China may have no intention to pay up, Bailey indicated that if afforded a valid judgment by a federal court, Missouri can begin "seizing assets that the Chinese government owns, not only in the state of Missouri but using any willing partner in any state in the United States of America."

Although Bailey suggested that the state is still in the process of identifying potential Chinese assets to seize, farmland might be the way to begin working up to the $25 billion figure. A 2021 report from the Department of Agriculture indicated that China had by that time acquired roughly 384,000 acres of American agricultural land. It will take a lot more, however, to make Missourians whole for the fallout caused by the pandemic.

Bailey noted further that regarding the case, Missouri is in "constant contact with the Trump administration."

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