DeSantis Signs Bill to Combat CCP Influence in Fla., Calls for Accountability for China, ‘Bureaucrats’ in the U.S. for Engaging in COVID Cover-Up

EXCERPT:

DESANTIS: "We’re here today to sign two important pieces of legislation into law. And the goal of these bills is the stop combat nefarious foreign influence and corporate espionage in Florida. If you look at what’s going on now with the Coronavirus pandemic and the cover up of the origins of Covid-19, it’s pretty clear that this was a virus that almost assuredly leaked out of this lab in Wuhan. This is a lab where these scientists were working very closely with the Communist Party of China, as well as the Chinese military. When you had these folks fall ill, who were working in that lab last fall, the Communist party of China decided to cover it up. They didn’t give any information out. They didn’t ask for any assistance. They didn’t give a heads up to anybody. They tried to cover it up, and basically the world has had to endure over year and a half of -- of a lot of bad stuff as a result of this. So they covered it up and they need to be held accountable for this. But I also think if you look at what’s happened since then, it’s pretty clear that if you go back last year at the beginning of 2020, January, February, there were people scurrying around, and you see this in Fauci's emails to try to cover up the fact that this may have gone out of a lab. You actually had people saying, 'There’s no way it could have come of a lab', and privately they were acknowledging it very well likely did come out of the lab. And so, I think what this is exposed is you do have relationships between a lot of these institutions in China, particularly in the research realm and bureaucrats in the United States. You have a whole bunch of other institutions. And so our bill set a focus on foreign influence writ large, absolutely the seven countries that are identified specifically, of course, the Communist Party of China, but yes, communist Cuba, Venezuela, all those, and it’s all very important. But I think if you look right now, there is no single entity that exercises a more pervasive, nefarious influence across a wide range of American industries and institutions than the Communist Party of China."