Two Republican lawmakers are introducing legislation to force the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to release with their documents on the origins of COVID-19 — or else pay $1 million per day.
Republicans Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas told Fox News Digital that the HHS COVID-19 Origin Transparency Act would require HHS to publicly release all of its records related to the emergence of the virus that brought the world to a halt in 2020.
"The ‘public health’ regime continues to conceal the truth regarding the origins of COVID-19, vaccine development, masks, and the pandemic as a whole," Roy told Fox News Digital.
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"This legislation will cut through bureaucratic stonewalling and let the American people finally seek the truth wherever it may lead." the Texas Republican continued.
"The world and the American people deserve to know the truth about the origins of Covid-19, China’s involvement, and the ongoing cover-up," Marshall told Fox News Digital.
"Yet, here we are after YEARS of asking for the Biden Administration to provide this much-needed transparency and they continue to stonewall our investigations and find ‘work arounds’ to dodge our requests," the Kansas senator continued. "Every American should be asking, ‘Why is that?’"
"Our legislation requires the HHS to publicly release all agency records related to the origins of COVID-19, the cover-up of the pandemic origins, and coronavirus research, including vaccine development," he added. "It’s past time for answers- this is a matter of national security."
The Republicans' bill requires the HHS secretary to publicly release all "unpublished and unreleased records," including "all records pending authorization or other approval from any organization of the People’s Republic of China," "all coronavirus records," and "all coronavirus research records," among other documents.
The legislation also requires the HHS secretary to publish "a record pertaining to sick researchers in Wuhan, China, during the Fall of 2019, including for any such researcher" his or her name, the name of the laboratory and the researcher's role there, "symptoms, and date of symptom onset."
The published record would also be required to disclose "whether the researcher was involved with or exposed to coronavirus research in Wuhan research laboratories," if he or she "visited a hospital or medical clinic while they were ill," and "a description of any other actions taken by the researcher that may suggest they were experiencing a serious illness at the time."
The HHS secretary would also be required to publish "a record pertaining to coronavirus research conducted in cooperation with any Chinese national public research university affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China" and "a record pertaining to concerns of bioweapon programs in China," including records related to COVID-19 as a bioweapon.
The bill requires the HHS secretary to "submit a report to the Congress containing a summary of each item of information that is described" in the required publications, but "withheld" under the bill's provisions for classified information that was not initially determined to be confidential.
Should the HHS secretary not comply, the bill mandates the department transfer money to pay off the national debt in increments of $1 million per day.
Roy is introducing the bill to the House on Friday while Marshall will bring the bill to the Senate floor next week when the upper chamber comes back to work.
The bill comes after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) published a lackluster report on the origins of COVID-19 after being mandated by Congress to do so.
A bill led by Republican Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and signed into law by President Biden earlier this year required the director of national intelligence to declassify COVID-19 origins documents.
