Chinese government entities are suing an American senator and a high-ranking FBI official for $50 billion, escalating a legal battle over the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit, filed in the Intermediate People’s Court of Wuhan, accuses the defendants of defamation for alleging China was responsible for the global outbreak and hoarded personal protective equipment.

The complaint targets Senator Eric Schmitt, who filed an initial lawsuit against China while serving as Missouri’s attorney general; Andrew Bailey, a former attorney general who is now co-deputy director of the FBI; and the state of Missouri itself.

The plaintiffs — identified as the People’s Government of Wuhan Municipality, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology — are seeking 356 billion Chinese Yuan ( $50.5 billion) in damages. They argue that the Missouri officials engaged in “malicious vexatious litigation, fabricating enormous disinformation, and spreading stigmatizing and discriminating slanders,” which they claim severely damaged their reputation and ability to cooperate internationally.

The filing comes after a federal judge in the United States ruled in favor of Missouri earlier this year, resulting in a default judgment of about $25 billion against China after the country declined to participate in the trial. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway recently escalated efforts to collect on that judgment by asking the State Department to help pursue Chinese-owned assets.

Ms. Hanaway characterized the new lawsuit from Wuhan as a defensive maneuver. “This lawsuit is a stalling tactic and tells me that we have been on the right side of this issue all along,” Ms. Hanaway said in a press release. “I find it extremely telling that the Chinese blame our great state for ‘belittling the social evaluation’ of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Senator Schmitt said he will wear the new lawsuit “like a badge of honor.”

“China’s sinister malfeasance during the Covid-19 pandemic led to over a million Americans losing their lives, economic turmoil that rocked our country for years, and an enormous amount of human suffering, and as Missouri Attorney General I filed suit to hold them accountable,” he said in a statement. 

The senator also said the new lawsuit “is their way of distracting from what the world already knows, China has blood on its hands. China lied about the origins of Covid virus, they tried to cover it up, and they upended the world by creating a global pandemic that resulted in immense human loss. The responsibility lies squarely at their feet.”

In addition to the monetary damages, the Chinese lawsuit demands public apologies be published in major Western and Chinese media outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, and Xinhua.

The legal conflict began in 2020 when Mr. Schmitt sued the People’s Republic of China, alleging negligence and a cover-up regarding the spread of the virus. While a U.S. district judge initially dismissed parts of the case based on sovereign immunity, an appeals court allowed claims regarding the hoarding of PPE to proceed.

Legal experts have noted that collecting on judgments in either direction is unlikely due to international laws regarding sovereign immunity. However, the tit-for-tat filings signal deepening diplomatic friction.

The Chinese lawsuit asserts that the country “has always acted with openness, transparency and responsibility,” citing its delivery of medical supplies to 153 nations. However, American officials and a 2023 Health and Human Services inspector general report have disputed this, noting that the Wuhan lab refused to provide data on bat coronavirus experiments funded by the U.S. government.