Nashville restaurants are filing suit against Mayor John Cooper (D) saying his office purposefully exaggerated Covid19 infection rates in order to keep businesses closed.
“The hurt to these families, the revenue lost, to the city, the revenue lost to these business owners who have been struggling since March, it’s just absolutely criminal,” said Attorney Bryan Lewis who is representing several bars in the lawsuit.
This week emails were revealed that show discussions between Mayor Cooper’s office and the Metro Health Department about the low number of Covid19 cases that could be traced back to that city’s bars and restaurants – and how to keep that information from becoming public.
“My two cents. We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site,” one of the officials responds in a discussion on how to respond to a journalist’s questions about the stats.