Thursday, September 24, 2020

CORRUPT BRIBES SUCKING DEMOCRATS - "A huge miasma of corruption encircling Hunter and Joe Biden" VERONIKA KYRYLENKO

A huge miasma of corruption encircling Hunter and Joe Biden

Do you remember how Joe Biden gracefully demonstrated a true presidential demeanor by blasting an Iowan voter who asked him about Hunter Biden's role on the board of the corrupt Ukrainian company?

According to Joe, a man was a "damn liar," "fat," and "too old to vote for me."  Guess what.  The man was right, and the question was legitimate, even though Joe Biden doesn't condescend to answer any of those.  People, however, still ask, and it looks as though the questions are mounting with a neck-breaking speed that even a healthy and clear-witted politician would have a hard time handling.

On Sept. 23, Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, released a report titled "Hunter Biden, Burisma and Corruption: the Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy and Related Concerns" that revealed millions of dollars in questionable financial transactions between Hunter Biden and his associates and foreign individuals, including the wife of the former mayor of Moscow and individuals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

The investigation was launched in August 2019 as the result of the so-called "Henniges transaction," when Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) raised concerns over the process by which the Obama administration's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approved the acquisition of a U.S. automotive technology company, Henniges, with reported military applications.  Henniges was reportedly jointly acquired by Chinese government entities and an investment firm linked to family members of then–vice president Joe Biden and other Obama administration officials.  Mr. Grassley wrote: "[O]ne of the companies involved in the Henniges transaction was a billion dollar private investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR).  BHR was formed in November of 2013 by a merger between the Chinese-government linked firm, Bohai Capital, and a company named Rosemont Seneca Partners.  Rosemont Seneca was reportedly formed in 2009 by Hunter Biden, the son of then–Vice President Joe Biden, Chris Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, and others."

As the investigation dug dipper, new and unexpected sums of cash, foreign entities, and transactions appeared in the Biden case.  The Biden family and their associates got involved in shady relations with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh, and Chinese nationals, which raises criminal concerns and extradition threats, as put in the report.

Here are some key findings:

First and foremost: The Obama administration was aware of, but did nothing about, the conflict of interest that was created when Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was appointed to the board of Burisma, a corrupt Ukrainian fossil fuel company.  In early 2015, the former acting deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, George Kent, raised concerns to officials in Vice President Joe Biden's office about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden's role on Burisma's board.  His concerns went unanswered.  Later that year, senior State Department official Amos Hochstein raised concerns with Vice President Biden himself, as well as with Hunter Biden, that Hunter's position on Burisma's board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.  In addition to that, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, admitted that she had been briefed about the fact that Hunter Biden was on Burisma's board, but ignored it in 2016.

Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer joined Burisma after the British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma's owner — it was a known fact that Burisma is not a suitable company for the vice president's son to join — especially when the father is called a "public face of the administration's handling of Ukraine," where anti-corruption efforts were the number-one priority.  Nonetheless, over the course of the several years, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch for their participation on the board.

Furthermore, in addition to the over $4 million paid by Burisma for Hunter Biden's and Archer's board memberships, Hunter Biden, his family, and Archer received millions of dollars from foreign nationals with questionable backgrounds.  The report names Archer as receiving $142,300 from Kenges Rakishev of Kazakhstan, purportedly for a car, on the same day that Vice President Joe Biden appeared and addressed Ukrainian legislators in Kyiv regarding Russia's actions in Crimea.  Hunter Biden also received a $3.5-million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.  Hunter additionally opened a bank account with China's Gongwen Dong to fund a $100,000 global spending spree with James Biden and Sara Biden.  Hunter Biden had business associations with Ye Jianming, Gongwen Dong, and other Chinese nationals linked to the communist government and the People's Liberation Army.  Those associations resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow.  And last but not the least, it was found that Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an "Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring."  This is the same Hunter Biden who had well-known compulsive relationships with prostitutes and strippers back home. Even though Jill Biden claims that she "knows her son's character," so he couldn't do "anything wrong," paying women for sex and being associated with prostitution rings is something that resonates with Hunter's character just perfectly. Sentiments aside, it is simply hard to argue with stone-cold evidence of money wires.

You certainly may try to imagine one of Trump's children being in Hunter's place. The hell of professional protestors would have stormed the White House by now demanding "justice," because "no one is above the law." The media reaction to the 87 pages of the detailed report of the Biden's sketchy schemes? Don't roll your eyes too hard, you don't want to injure yourself. Trump and Russia are to blame. 

The New York Times and The Washington Post scorned the report as an "inconclusive" partisan smear echoing of Russian propaganda. "Republican Inquiry Finds No ­Evidence of Wrongdoing by Biden," was the Times' headline. "GOP's Hunter Biden report doesn't back up Trump's actual conspiracy theory — or anything close to it," said the Washington Post. "GOP senators' anti-Biden report repackages old claims" was another typical headline dismissing the ­report, this from Politico.

A story of a then-Vice President's son receiving millions of dollars from foreign entities associated closely with their governments and whose interests did not necessarily coincide with America's best interests gets frowned upon with such unseen hypocrisy and blind bias, that one may wonder that if democracy truly dies in darkness, then maybe it is an ultimate leftist plan for this country, after all.  

Mainstream media may deliberately shut their eyes on the facts of the unfolding case of the Biden family getting rich in exchange for American interests. They may even distort the gross and, as it seems, criminal wrongdoings, as in some wild junkie's dream, and present it as a legit business venture. They may put as much lipstick on a pig as they wish. But an demented, enormously corrupt man who reeks of treason cannot be a president of the United States. 

Please follow Veronika Kyrylenko, Ph.D on Twitter or LinkedIn. 

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of images by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0Acaben, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0PxFuel public domainABC News YouTube screen shot, and Voice of America // public domain


ONE REALLY GETS THE PICTURE OF HOW UTTERLY THE U.S. SENATE IS WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE MULTIPLE DIRTY FORTUNES DIANNE FEINSTEIN HAS MADE OFF ELECTED OFFICE. 

HER PIMP HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM, DOLES OUT 'CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS' BRIBES TO ALL HIGH PROFILE DEMS SO THEY KEEP THEIR MOUTHS CLOSED ABOUT THE FEINSTEIN-BLUM CRIME DUAL.

JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY!

After Feinstein was elected to the Senate in 1992, Blum continued profiting off their ties to China. A the same time, the freshman lawmaker was pitching herself as a “China hand” to colleagues, even once claiming “that in my last life maybe I was Chinese.” HARIS ALIC

 

Rand Paul: I’m Sending Hunter Biden Report to DOJ for Criminal Referral

1:00

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) stated that he will send the preliminary report on Hunter Biden’s business dealings to the Department of Justice and ask for a criminal referral.

Paul said, “I think riding on Air Force Two and doing business is illegal. I think that is against the law, and probably a felony. I think it’s illegal to take money from a Russian politician’s wife, $3.5 million. Was it reported accurately? I think the only way to determine the actual legality of this is to have it referred to the Department of Justice. So, I’m going to send the report over. I don’t know if the whole committee will vote for it, but I’m sending the report, tomorrow, to the Department of Justice, and we’re asking for a criminal referral.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett


China’s Champion Dianne Feinstein

Longtime apologist now acts as PRC asset.


Lloyd Billingsley

 

Back in April, Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt, a Republican, filed a lawsuit charging that Chinese Communist officials are “responsible for the enormous death, suffering, and economic losses they inflicted on the world, including Missourians.”  For Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the  Missouri lawsuit was the problem.

“We launch a series of unknown events that could be very, very dangerous,” said Feinstein in a July 30, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.  “I think this is a huge mistake.” As Feinstein doubtless knows, the Chinese company Build Your Dreams (BYD) , which bagged a $1 billion mask deal with California, is suing Vice Media for a story charging that BYD had links to the Chinese military and forced labor. Feinstein did not say if that lawsuit was a mistake, and possibly launch unknown events that could be very dangerous. On the other hand, she had only praise for the Chinese government.

“Where I live, we hold China as a potential trading partner,” Feinstein said in the hearing. “As a country that has pulled tens of millions of people out of poverty in a short period of time. And as a country growing into a respectable nation among other nations. And I deeply believe that. I’ve been to China a number of times. I’ve studied the issues.” Much of that study, it turns out, has been on location.

“I’ve been coming to China for 31 years, so I’m not a newcomer,” Feinstein told James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal during a 2006 visit to Shanghai. In Beijing, the U.S. Senator explained, “we spent time with Zhu Rongji, the former premier who was a mayor of Shanghai” and “a good friend.”

In 2014, on the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Feinstein issued a statement recalling “perhaps even thousands” of demonstrators killed. “I know of no other country that has made as much economic and industrial progress in the last 25 years than China,” Feinstein wrote. “But what this anniversary reminds us is that progress still must be made in the areas of human rights, rule of law and governance.”

The senator has since been rather quiet about any human rights progress China might have achieved, and expressed no second thoughts about China’s membership in the World Trade Organization. That removed the annual congressional review of its record on human rights and weapons proliferation records, a huge win for the Communist regime.

As Rosemarie Ho reported in The Nation, Democrats in general and Feinstein in particular have kept rather quiet about the democratic protesters in Hong Kong. As it happens, Feinstein’s China issues go much deeper. The former San Francisco mayor had a Chinese spy on her staff for some 20 years, and he was much more than her “driver.” As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, the spy even attended Chinese Consulate functions for the senator.

As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely from the greatly expanded China trade she supported.” And the senator “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.” All this, plus a spy on her staff through three election cycles. 

Feinstein was one of the first to cry “racism” over the Wuhan virus that has caused massive damage in the United States and around the world. When one American state attempts to hold China accountable losses in court, Sen. Feinstein calls it dangerous. She “deeply believes” that one of the most repressive regimes in history is a respectable nation.

By contrast, as the San Francisco Democrat said in a June 2 statement, the United States is burdened with “systemic racism in areas ranging from housing to employment to education,” all part of “institutional racism.” Feinstein invoked “President Obama,” to lead the reform process. He has been acting as though still in office.

Obama Defends Mob Rule,” reads the August 3 American Greatness headline. As Conrad Black explains, the 44th president of the United States is uncritical of the violent mobs now terrorizing the country. This “shows how terminally morally and intellectually decayed the Obama-Clinton-Biden Democratic Party has become,” and that is not a stretch.

From House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on down, not a single Democrat has offered the slightest criticism of the Antifa-BLM axis. Instead they call federal officers “stormtroopers” and “secret police,” and support the defunding of police departments. Democrat support for violent mobs sends a signal to another group out to take down the country.

As recent attacks at military bases in Florida and Texas confirm, Islamic terrorists continue their jihad against America and Americans. The death sentence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has now been overturned. That brought no statement from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who finds fault with a Missouri lawsuit against China.

When a predictable apologist becomes a positive asset for the Communist regime, that could turn out very, very dangerous. If anybody thought the time has finally come for a thorough investigation of California Senator Dianne Feinstein it would be hard to blame them.

 

https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/americas-china-dependency-syndrome-lloyd-billingsley

The deal would impose no review of 

human rights and impose no conditions for 

democratic reforms, supervised multi-

party elections and such. All that, and 

more, is already a done deal with China, 

like the USSR a one-party Communist 

dictatorship that never produced a single 

product the United States needs. This has 

come about, in large part, due to U.S. 

Senator Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco 

Democrat.                                                                                     LLOYD BILLINGSLEY

 

 

https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/americas-china-dependency-syndrome-lloyd-billingsley

 

America’s China Dependency Syndrome

Lessons from the USSR.

April 28, 2020 

Lloyd Billingsley

“Made in China” has been a familiar label on products for years but it wasn’t until March of 2020 that Americans learned of the perils that might entail. China threatened to impose export controls on pharmaceuticals that would plunge America into “the mighty sea of coronavirus.

Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters the United States was “dangerously reliant” on China for critical goods, including parts for technologies needed to fight COVID-19. Since 2004, Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been supplying 80-90 percent of U.S. antibiotics. Americans might wonder how they landed in such a dependent position, and that invites a comparison with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The world’s first socialist state, established in the world’s largest nation, never produced a single product the West wanted or needed. For all its vast natural resources, the USSR was an economic basket case, and by the mid-1980s in serious trouble.

Suppose that some U.S. senator had then offered a trade deal that ignored the regime’s human rights violations and allowed state-owned Soviet companies to manufacture goods for the American market, all marked “Made In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” These would include vital pharmaceuticals and the deal would allow the use of Soviet steel, and Soviet labor, in major infrastructure projects in the United States.

The deal would impose no review of human rights and impose no conditions for democratic reforms, supervised multi-party elections and such. All that, and more, is already a done deal with China, like the USSR a one-party Communist dictatorship that never produced a single product the United States needs. This has come about, in large part, due to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Democrat.

On a visit to Shanghai in 2006 Feinstein told James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal, “I’ve been coming to China for 31 years, so I’m not a newcomer.” That would put her first visit in 1975, one year before the death of the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong his own self. Feinstein was then a San Francisco supervisor, and as mayor struck up a sister-city relationship with Shanghai. On the 2006 trip Feinstein spent time with former Shanghai mayor Zhu Rongji, “a good friend.”

Areddy asked about the Tiananmen Square massacre then turning 21. Feinstein said it was a “a great setback for China in the view of the world,” a public-relations problem for China, not a human rights issue. “It was just the PLA (People’s Liberation Army)” and China “learned lessons from it.” Still, Feinstein admitted, “we did not discuss it.”

As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Sen. Feinstein’s ties to China are “way deeper” than any Chinese spy in her office. Feinstein maintained a “strictly apologist line” on China’s human rights atrocities, and Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely” during her career in the Senate. Sen. Feinstein “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.” For two decades and three election cycles, Feinstein harbored a Chinese spy who fed “political intelligence” to Beijing’s Communist regime. Since that article, the dossier has grown longer.

As Rosemarie Ho noted in The Nation, Dianne Feinstein failed to support the democracy protesters in Hong Kong. When the coronavirus hit these shores, Feinstein was uncritical of China and one of the first to cry “racism” against those who pointed out the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, China.

Ben Weingarten wondered how a motivated and empowered prosecutor would operate if tasked to explore “any links and/or coordination” between the Chinese government, Feinstein and individuals associated with her office. Such an investigation never took place with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the most servile apologist of Communist China since Anna Louise Strong, and certainly the most influential. On the other hand, Donald Trump was thoroughly investigated for “collusion” with Russia, which turned out to be a hoax.

It was the president’s tweet that brought Feinstein’s Chinese spy to public attention. President Trump has access to all U.S. intelligence, a major reason domestic and foreign foes alike are desperately trying to remove him from office. In his April 19 press conference, the president called the upper reaches of the DOJ and FBI “human scum,” and their inattention to Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and other high-profile Democrats confirms that the rot continues.

President Trump is now throwing down with the invisible enemy of coronavirus and making progress despite opposition from Democrats and their media allies. As they parrot Chinese propaganda, the president has already started the decoupling process.

“We cannot outsource our independence,” the president said last Monday. “We cannot be reliant on foreign nations. I’ve been saying this for a long time. If we’ve learned one thing it’s let's do it here, let’s build it here, let’s make it here.”

As with the USSR, we don’t need China for anything. And as Chuck Berry said, anything you want they got right here in the USA.

 

"The policy agendas of today's leading Democrats including Medicare for All; the Green New Deal; open borders; and their approach to issues such as social justice, economic and tax policy, foreign policy, gun control, and energy policy, plus so many others, are rarely held up to comprehensive public examination and scrutiny by the mainstream media in any truly meaningful way."

 

Is today's Democratic Party deceiving the people?

 

By K.S. Guardiola

Bill Gertz is an author of eight books and an award-winning national security journalist and currently is the national security columnist for The Washington Times.  His recently published book, Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy provides valuable insights revealing why Chinese communist leaders and their increasing totalitarian system of government pose such a menacing threat to the world and how they are actively undermining American democracy and freedom. 

While the book is focused on modern China, valuable lessons can be learned about the dangers of totalitarianism and political corruption operating anywhere in the world.  Especially noteworthy is material presented in Chapter 1 — "How Communists Lie," specifically by Guo Wengui, who is a Chinese billionaire and political exile and former insider who left China in 2014.  The first chapter includes quotes by Guo Wengui exposing how the Chinese communist system operates in deceitful ways.

Guo Wengui is a controversial public figure operating from his current home in NYC.  He is a leading and well known activist opposing the Chinese communist government through several different methods, including social media, public appearances and meeting with prominent Western opinion-makers and politicians.  Opinions today widely differ about his actual status, his background, and his true intentions.  However, he knows the communist system well as a former political insider and the ideology behind it, so the ideas offered by him are valuable to consider.

Guo Wengui starts by reminding us that China is a communist country and that communism attempts to build a utopian society, therefore the very basis of the system is false.  As a consequence, he persuasively states that in fact, communists are professional liars, because they will never realize what they promise.  It is in fact impossible to do so.  He states that traditional Western culture is built on the morality of right and wrong.  On the other hand, he asserts that in the communist system, truth and lies are interchangeable.  As an example, if the truth furthers the ideological cause, it will be used, and when outright lies are expedient, there is no unwillingness to use them. 

Guo Wengui labels today's Chinese political system as a kleptocracy concerned and primarily motivated by fulfilling the interests of a comparatively small elite rather than the well-being of the Chinese people.  These selected few elites are all exclusively high-ranking members of the Communist Party.  Totalitarian systems such as the one that exists today in China strive to take total control of the everyday lives of their citizens, including their thoughts and attitudes as well as their daily activities.  The Chinese Communist Party regularly uses its state-controlled mass and social media to maintain absolute political control, often relying on outright deceit.

As I read this characterization of the workings of the Chinese Communist Party and its leaders, it led me to thinking more about current political conditions closer to home.

In our country, the most powerful collective mechanism for the people to come together on a regular basis and have the right to choose the political agenda and the type of country we want to live in is by voting.  The American voter goes to the polls with the expectation that our elected representatives will work to deliver solutions to the issues and challenges facing our country.  Since his inauguration, President Trump has worked tirelessly to implement his agenda and has been exceptionally successful in doing so.  Various positive results have occurred in a wide variety of areas ranging from the economy, immigration, and trade policy to national security.  

The most dangerous assault on our system of government today is the orchestrated efforts by the Democratic Party to actively work in a series of campaigns to invalidate the results of the 2016 election.  Democrats actively resist, impugn, and call into question without exception any policy initiative by the Trump administration.  The Democrats currently promote an environment of resistance by outright deception indicating a determination not to offer any compromise on issues.  In addition, they do not seem to display any regard for the consequences of their actions on our country.

Extending over more than three years, on December 18, these efforts led to the House voting along party lines on two articles to impeach President Trump.  The House voted 230-197 to charge Trump with abuse and 229-198 to charge him with obstruction of Congress.  A key indicator of the continued magnitude of their determination to remove the president from office is that only three Democrats joined in to vote in opposition to one or both of the charges against the president.

All of this is occurring within an environment where there is no actual evidence of any impeachable offenses ever being committed by the president or any members of his administration.  However, there is being uncovered on virtually a daily basis extensive evidence of unprecedented political corruption and subversive activities authorized and conducted by high-ranking members of the Obama administration, with all of them directed at destroying candidate and then President Trump.   

The move to impeach President Trump is occurring as Democratic Party moves rapidly left politically openly advocating adopting socialism in America in an apparent attempt to radically transform the very nature of our country and system of government.  The growing appeal of socialism in this country can be attributed to many factors.  The brand of socialism presented by many of today's leading Democratic politicians has an alluring and emotional appeal to many people.  It is portrayed as a political system consisting of fair and equitable solutions to many of our most challenging political, economic, and social issues.

The policy agendas of today's leading Democrats including Medicare for All; the Green New Deal; open borders; and their approach to issues such as social justice, economic and tax policy, foreign policy, gun control, and energy policy, plus so many others, are rarely held up to comprehensive public examination and scrutiny by the mainstream media in any truly meaningful way. 

China today is on a path under paramount leader Xi Jinping and an increasingly powerful Communist Party of evolving its political system to be even more totalitarian, ready and willing to go to greater lengths and measures to control virtually every aspect of its citizens' lives.

In our country, is the Democrats' socialist vision and associated policies for America fake, and can they ever deliver on what they promise, and will their agenda ultimately be of benefit or detriment to the American people?  Do they threaten our freedoms in an attempt to further control our lives by implementing a significantly larger government apparatus that will include much greater regulation of a citizen's daily activities?  Are they moving us on a path toward totalitarianism similar to the one evolving in China today?

The difference in our country is that our future can still be determined by the voters in 2020.  At this time in our history and with an increasingly left-leaning radical Democratic Party and their agenda, the results of the next election will profoundly define the future direction of our nation and way of life.

 

 

FEINSTEIN HAS SPENT HER POLITICAL LIFE STALKING THE HALLS OF CONGRESS SNIFFING OUT DEALS THAT PUT HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN HER POCKETS.

SHE HAS AVOIDED PROSECUTION BY VOTING AGAINST ANY ETHICS BILLS AND HER HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM'S HANDING OUT "CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION" BRIBES TO EVERY DEMOCRAT OUT THERE!

 

 

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/07/she-ranks-as-one-of-most-corrupt-and.html

 

 

IN THE November 2006 election, the voters demanded congressional ethics reform. And so, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is now duly in charge of regulating the ethical behavior of her colleagues. But for many years, Feinstein has been beset by her own ethical conflict of interest, say congressional ethics experts.

 

“All in all, it was an incredible victory for the Chinese government. Feinstein has done more for Red China than other any serving U.S. politician. “ Trevor Loudon

 

“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  AMERICAN THINKER.com

 

 

Senator Who Employed Chinese Spy Endorses Joe Biden for President

Win McNamee/Getty Images

  9 Oct 20192,419

5:44

A high-profile U.S. senator with professional and personal ties to China — including once employing one of its spies — is backing former Vice President Joe Biden amid mounting questions over his son’s business dealings with the communist regime.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced her endorsement of the former vice president on Tuesday, claiming to have witnessed Biden’s “fortitude” and leadership during their overlapping tenures in Congress.

Feinstein said in a statement:

I’ve worked closely with Vice President Biden and I’ve seen firsthand his legislative ability, his statesmanship, and most importantly his moral fortitud. During his time in Congress and in the White House, Joe Biden has been a tireless fighter for hard working American families.

The endorsement comes as Biden’s presidential campaign is besieged by scandal regarding the lucrative business dealings his youngest son, Hunter, had with foreign governments.

Only hours before Feinstein’s endorsement, the Chinese government announced it would not investigate how Hunter Biden ended up at the center of one its top private equity firms. The Chinese foreign ministry made the decision after President Donald Trump publicly called for a probe of Hunter Biden’s dealings with Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). In particular, Trump has noted that the circumstances surrounding BHR’s creation could have posed a conflict of interest for Joe Biden.

As Peter Schweizer, senior contributor at Breitbart News, revealed in his bestselling book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Hunter Biden inked the multibillion-dollar deal that created BHR with a subsidiary of the state-owned Bank of China in 2013.

The timing of the lucrative deal has been brought into question as it came only 12 days after Hunter visited China with his father aboard Air Force Two. Officially, the then-vice president was visiting the country amid escalating tensions over islands in the South China Sea and decided to bring his granddaughter and son along. In a March 2018 interview with Breitbart News Tonight, however, Schweizer detailed the political machinations that preceded Hunter Biden’s $1.5 billion venture with China:

In December of 2013, Vice President Joe Biden flies to Asia for a trip, and the centerpiece for that trip is a visit to Beijing, China. To put this into context, in 2013, the Chinese have just exerted air rights over the South Pacific, the South China Sea. They basically have said, ‘If you want to fly in this area, you have to get Chinese approval. We are claiming sovereignty over this territory.’ Highly controversial in Japan, in the Philippines, and in other countries. Joe Biden is supposed to be going there to confront the Chinese. Well, he gets widely criticized on that trip for going soft on China. For basically not challenging them, and Japan and other countries are quite upset about this.

Since its creation, BHR has invested heavily in energy and defense projects across the globe. As of June, Hunter Biden was still involved with BHR, sitting on its board of directors and owning a minority stake of the fund estimated to be worth more than $430,000.

Such dealings at the center of politics and business, while perhaps not illegal, are not exclusive to the Biden family alone. As a few noted at the time of Feinstein’s endorsement, the senator and her husband have their own close ties to the communist country.

During her tenure as mayor of San Francisco in the late-1970s and early-1980s, Feinstein took advantage of the newly normalized diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China by establishing one of the first sister city partnership between San Francisco and Shanghai. Through that partnership, Feinstein led trade delegations to China in which she and her husband, Richard Blum, became acquainted with some of the country’s most prominent political leaders.

As the Federalist noted in August 2018, Feinstein and her husband leveraged those relationships to boost their own wealth. In 1986, Feinstein and Jiang Zemin — the then-mayor of Shanghai, who would later ascend to the presidency of the People’s Republic of China — “designated several corporate entities for fostering commercial relations.” One of those firms was Shanghai Pacific Partners, which employed Blum as a director. Blum reportedly had an interest of upwards of $500,000 in a project backed by Shanghai Pacific Partners.

After Feinstein was elected to the Senate in 1992, Blum continued profiting off their ties to China. A the same time, the freshman lawmaker was pitching herself as a “China hand” to colleagues, even once claiming “that in my last life maybe I was Chinese.” Through her seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Feinstein led the fight on a number of initiatives seen as being favorable to China, including granting the country permanent most-favored-nation trading status in 2000.

Despite Feinstein and her husband having a close relationship with Jiang, the Chinese government targeted the senator as part of its espionage operations. In the early 2000s, the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) recruited a longtime employee of the senator to gather information about the inner workings of her congressional and district offices. Feinstein only learned of the staffer’s duplicity in 2013, after he’d already been on her payroll for more than 20 years.

“While this person, who was a liaison to the local Chinese community, was fired, charges were never filed against him,” Politico reported in 2018, speculating that because “the staffer was providing political intelligence and not classified information—making prosecution far more difficult.”

Apart from the convoluted history of the senator’s ties to China, the political timing of Feinstein’s endorsement also caught many off guard. The California Democrat, who hosted a fundraiser on Biden’s behalf last week alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) daughter, is only the most recent figure from the Democrat establishment to openly pledge support for the former vice president. Feinstein’s endorsement, however, was not totally expected, especially since her seamate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), is mounting a bid of her own for the Democrat nomination. In fact, earlier this year, Feinsten flirted with the notion of remaining neutral in the 2020 contest out of respect for Harris.

Compounding the political picture is that most polls show Biden no longer the favorite to win California, having fallen behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

Feinstein, however, did not address any of that when endorsing the former vice president on Tuesday. Instead, the senator offered platitudes about Biden’s work to enhance gun control and how his campaign was a “fight to restore the soul of the nation.”

 

Russian Billionaire Who Wired $3.5M to Hunter Biden Got Contract From New Orleans Museum

 
September 24, 2020 Updated: September 24, 2020

A German company owned by the Russian billionaire who wired Hunter Biden $3.5 million received a contract to build part of the World War II Museum in New Orleans, according to a fact sheet on the museum’s website.

Elena Baturina, the widow of former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, bought German structural membrane manufacturer Hightex in early 2015, according to Russian-language news reports. In April 2017, she announced that Hightex will build part of the Canopy of Peace for the World War II Museum, according to several Russian-language media outlets.

Three years earlier, on Feb. 14, 2014, Baturina sent $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, a company co-founded by Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to a report released by Senate Republicans on Sept. 23. The wire was accompanied by a note stating “Consultancy Agreement DD12.02.2014.”

The Canopy of Peace project at the WWII museum has been plagued by delays largely due to issues stemming from a different contractor, according to The New Orleans Advocate. As of August, half of the material from Hightex had yet to be shipped to the project, which was at that point eight months behind schedule. The museum told The Epoch Times in an email that it expects the rest of the material to be onsite by the end of October.

“The museum had no knowledge of any relationship between the Bidens, Devon Archer, and Hightex, and in no way, shape, or form were they a factor in the hiring decision,” the museum said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

“Hightex was one of the companies that bid for the project, and the museum hired them because they had the best-qualified proposal for the job. Our vetting of Hightex was relegated to the company’s services and ability to complete the job.”

Joe Biden hosted a fundraiser at the museum during the early stages of his presidential campaign in August 2019.

While there’s no evidence of a link between Baturina’s wire and the contract awarded to the museum, questions about both transactions may emerge because the Senate Republicans discovered Baturina’s payments after they were flagged due to her “reported criminal activity.” Baturina didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent to the email of a think tank she founded.

A year after sending $3.5 million to Biden’s company between May 6 and Dec. 8, 2015, Baturina wired more than $241,000 to the company. The money was then forwarded to BAK USA LLC, a Buffalo-based tablet manufacturer that would eventually go bankrupt claiming it was $39 million in debt.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had praised BAK USA when it received a contract from Microsoft in early 2016. Before BAK USA went bankrupt, New York state handed the firm a tax abatement allowing it to operate tax-free for 10 years. The firm has since re-incorporated and appears to be in the same line of business.

Three months after the last wire to BAK USA via Hunter Biden’s firm, Baturina announced that she had purchased $10 million in real estate near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, according to a press release. She intended to convert the zoning of the assets to accommodate for residential units, a process which requires a lengthy approval process.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) led the effort behind the report released on Sept. 23. The Baturina transactions are a small part of a larger report that also documented links between Hunter Biden and foreign nationals from Ukraine and China.

Hunter Biden accepted a well-paid position on the board of a Ukrainian gas giant while his father served as the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine. The report found that senior officials raised red flags about Hunter Biden’s role, which the administration repeatedly ignored.

Follow Ivan on Twitter: @ivanpentchoukov

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