Following last week’s historic court ruling that awarded a $24 billion judgment to the state of Missouri at the expense of the Chinese government over harms it inflicted during the COVID pandemic, Missouri’s attorney general says that the lawsuit can be a blueprint for other states to follow.

On March 7, a federal judge in Missouri ruled that the Chinese government withheld critical information about the spread of the coronavirus and cut off the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) at the height of the pandemic, which “hampered the early response to the pandemic in the United States and made it impossible to purchase enough equipment for medical providers responding to the virus.” The $24 billion settlement was six times higher than the previous largest judgment in state history.

As noted by The New York Times, Missouri’s lawyers “showed that China knew that the virus was spreading — and that it was spreading from person to person — long before it shared that information with the world” and also “took steps to nationalize American factories in China to produce protective equipment, which limited the supply available for export and drove up prices in places like Missouri.” In addition, the judge highlighted that COVID-19 “was the third-leading cause of death in Missouri in 2020 and 2021.”

Chinese officials quickly rebuffed the ruling. “The so-called lawsuit has no basis in fact, law or international precedence,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, remarked in a statement. “China does not and will not accept it. If China’s interests are harmed, we will firmly take reciprocal countermeasures according to international law.”

After the ruling, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) posted on X, “Hey China, You owe Missouri $24 BILLION. I just won a judgment in court. Pay up — or we start seizing assets and farmland.” On Monday, he joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” to discuss the ruling.

“My predecessor, Eric Schmidt, initially filed the lawsuit,” he explained. “It was dismissed at the trial court level. I appealed at the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and we just had a trial in late January where we put [out] all the evidence. And the court agreed that Missourians are owed $24 billion by the Chinese Communist Party and all the entities named as defendants. … And there’s a method by which this is redressed. It’s called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. It was a statute passed by Congress in 1976, signed into law by President Gerald Ford, that specifically allows states to redress grievances against foreign entities.”

Bailey went on to emphasize that other states should likewise attempt to seek damages from the communist regime in response to the devastation caused by the pandemic, which likely originated from a lab leak in Wuhan.

“This is a blueprint for other states to follow,” he insisted. “… I would encourage all the states to look at what you know, how their apparatus of state government performed during COVID and the wrongs that were perpetrated by the Chinese government against them and redress those grievances on behalf of the people of their states. We know that the Biden administration was complicit in the cover up during COVID. I mean, from the start to the finish of the Biden administration, when they were censoring speech related to COVID on Big Tech social media platforms, thereby exacerbating the harms of the pandemic, to Biden’s final hours of pardoning Dr. Anthony Fauci.”

As to whether or not China will in fact pay the enormous settlement, Bailey expressed doubts but noted that his office has the authority to seize Chinese-held assets.

“I remain skeptical that China will actually pay this judgment,” he acknowledged. “I mean, they never participated in litigation to fight, despite the fact that they’re doing business in Missouri [and] doing business across the United States of America and thus are subjecting themselves to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. They declined to participate in the litigation, despite the fact that they were served with notice and had an opportunity to put on any defenses. I don’t think they have any mitigating evidence, and that’s why they didn’t participate. They know that they did wrong. They know they harmed Missourians and the United States of America and the entire world, and they’re going to try to get out of paying by running and hiding.”

Bailey continued, “But we’re going to find Chinese-owned assets in Missouri and across the United States of America, and we’re going to use the legal apparatus of the state and federal government to seize and sell those assets. … China is heavily invested in real and personal property in the United States of America, and certainly they have used subterfuge to conceal the line of ownership of several of those assets. We will penetrate that subterfuge, find those responsible, hold them accountable, take those assets, and … sell them to make Missourians whole again.”

“Missouri is owed a debt here, and China is going to pay up on that debt one way or the other,” he concluded.