Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is calling for Congress to pass a law making the Chinese government open to lawsuits on behalf of the "families who have lost loved to the pandemic."
Gingrich made his comments in a column posted on the Fox News website on Tuesday.
“After the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, the families of the 270 people who were killed were awarded a total of $2.7 billion in damages,” he said. “Applied to COVID-19, the numbers would be staggering. There already are lawsuits being filed in several states and this would simply waive the sovereign immunity defense.
“Furthermore, the United States should join other nations in calculating the economic costs of the pandemic and deliver a bill to the Chinese Communist dictatorship to compensate these countries for the damage it has done to us all.
And he noted as of last December, China owned more than $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes.
“That money should be escrowed pending the outcome of the various trials,” he said. “Furthermore, other Chinese government assets in the United States should be held in escrow pending the negotiations over the dictatorship’s liability for the loss of life and the destruction of the economy.”
And he added: “It is time the Chinese Communist dictatorship paid for its lies, the lives it has destroyed, and the economies it has crippled.”
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.