Wednesday, July 12, 2023

White House Fights to Strip Tough-On-China Provisions From Annual Defense Spending Bill - PARASITE GAMER LAWYER JOE BIDEN - FOLKS, THE BIG GUY, CRACKHEAD HUNTER AND I HAVE ALWAYS HAD COZY RELATIONS WITH ALL OF AMERICA'S ENEMIES

SERVING RED CHINA: JOE BIDEN AT WORK



My colleague Peter Schweizer’s runaway bestseller, Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, first revealed that the Biden family received some $31 million from the highest levels of Chinese intelligence at the same time Hunter was paying the vice president’s bills. Schweizer believes that there is a slam dunk case to indict Hunter Biden.

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Watters: I guarantee you Satan went to law school

 

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 THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY

American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now.   

                               TOM FITTON - JUDICIAL WATCH



White House Fights to Strip Tough-On-China Provisions From Annual Defense Spending Bill

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
July 11, 2023

The Biden administration is trying to quash provisions in an annual defense spending bill that would stop China from infiltrating American universities and supplying Mexican cartels with lethal fentanyl.

The White House on Monday announced its opposition to a range of national security provisions included in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which Congress is currently debating. One provision would force the Pentagon to disclose information about foreign nationals working on military-funded research programs at American universities, where Chinese spies are known to steal proprietary research. Another would order the secretary of defense to determine whether Chinese government officials assisted or were aware of the transportation of fentanyl precursors to Mexican drug cartels.

According to the provisions' author, the White House’s opposition is tantamount to capitulating to Beijing.

"The Chinese Communist Party is poisoning and killing nearly a hundred thousand Americans each year with ‘Made in China’ fentanyl while their spies infiltrate our universities and even high-level government laboratories," Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) told the Washington Free Beacon.

"It’s an upside-down world in the Biden White House," added Banks, a member of the House Select Committee on China, "where appeasing Communist China comes first and America’s national security and well-being comes last."

Banks’s measures are part of a larger effort by congressional Republicans to use the NDAA as a vehicle to combat China. China hawks, in particular, have been angling for months to increase pressure on American universities that partner with the CCP on sensitive research projects. Lawmakers are already investigating American schools that use Pentagon funding for research projects that involve entities tied to the Chinese military.

China is one the most prolific donors to American universities, handing out more than $426 million to American schools since 2011, even as the federal government warns that Beijing is using its status to steal proprietary research and spy on Americans.

Under Banks’s transparency provision, the Pentagon would have to publicly disclose the identities of all individuals working on government-funded projects, including the "date and place of birth, country of citizenship, and immigration status in the case of a foreign national."

The White House, in a Monday statement on the NDAA discussions, said it "strongly opposes" this measure because it would "impose a significant increase in disclosure requirements for university research funded by DoD."

The White House also expressed concerns the reporting requirements could "jeopardize the Department’s ability to fund universities in States with nondiscrimination laws that prohibit citizenship and nationality reporting." The administration also worries the strict parameters would "deter the ability to attract the best and brightest foreign scientists from working with the Department."

Banks’s fentanyl measure also attracted White House opposition, primarily because it would force the Pentagon to publicly acknowledge that China is pumping deadly drugs into America—an accusation that could inflame tensions at a time when American diplomats are trying to repair relations with Beijing.

The U.S. ambassador to China, for instance, recently claimed the CCP is not responsible for America’s fentanyl crisis, even though virtually all of the ingredients for the drug are produced in China and shipped to Mexican cartels illicitly running the drug into the country.

The White House says any effort to tie China to the fentanyl crisis would interfere with its ability to "ensure foreign assistance or engagement is carried out in a manner consistent with foreign policy priorities."

Published under: China Confucius Institutes Defense Bill Feature Fentanyl Jim Banks Mexico Universities


Hunter Biden's Chinese Partners Recruited Ex-CIA Director To Do Beijing's Bidding

Think tank official who gave FBI info on Hunter Biden reached out to former CIA director James Woolsey, prosecutors say

Hunter Biden at a state dinner at the White House on June 22, 2023 (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
July 11, 2023

A Chinese energy conglomerate linked to Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly recruited former president Bill Clinton’s CIA director to do Beijing’s bidding, raising questions about what the firm sought from the Biden family.

According to federal prosecutors, CEFC China Energy funded a scheme to "recruit" former CIA director James Woolsey to pen articles for Chinese state-run media that promoted Chinese government initiatives. Prosecutors allege that CEFC China Energy ran the operation through Gal Luft, the co-director of a think tank Woolsey founded. Luft is charged with failing to register as a foreign agent for "work related to Chinese foreign principals." Luft, a dual Israeli and American citizen, disclosed earlier this year that he was under investigation, but claimed he was targeted because he provided the FBI with information about Hunter Biden’s work for CEFC China Energy in 2019.

The allegation that CEFC China Energy targeted a top American intelligence official for an influence operation is certain to add intrigue to the company’s dealings with the Biden family. The family's links to CEFC China Energy drew the attention of the Justice Department’s and FBI’s counterintelligence investigators, according to IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who led the agency’s tax fraud investigation of Hunter Biden. Republicans have asserted that the family’s work with CEFC China Energy "posed counterintelligence and extortion concerns," in part because of CEFC China Energy’s alleged ties to Chinese military intelligence.

In some ways, CEFC China Energy’s approach to Biden is similar to its outreach to Luft. Prosecutors allege that Patrick Ho, a CEFC China Energy executive and leader of the company’s China Energy Fund Committee think tank, gave $350,000 to Luft’s think tank in 2015. The following year, Ho asked Luft to "recruit and ‘educate’" Woolsey so that he "would make public statements…which were in the interest of China." According to prosecutors, Luft wrote articles under Woolsey’s name for Chinese state media outlets that promoted China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the massive infrastructure project that Beijing has used to gain influence in foreign countries. CEFC China Energy paid Woolsey $6,000 per month, according to the indictment.

CEFC China Energy also made its first outreach to Hunter Biden in 2015, when his father was vice president. The father of a classmate of Hunter Biden’s daughter contacted Hunter Biden in October 2015, offering to facilitate a donation from CEFC China to a charity where Hunter Biden served as a director. The man, Scott Oh, also asked to discuss "investment opportunities" and "invitations for the B’s to speak in China," an apparent reference to the Biden family.

Weeks later, former United Nations official Vuk Jeremic, who served as a consultant for CEFC China Energy, contacted Hunter Biden to arrange a meeting with the company.

It is unclear what transpired between CEFC China Energy and the Bidens until 2017, when Hunter Biden formally struck a lucrative consulting deal with the company.

The exact nature of Hunter Biden’s work for CEFC China Energy has remained a mystery. He discussed potential energy mergers for CEFC China Energy and energy companies in Louisiana, but those deals fizzled. The company paid Hunter Biden $5 million from August 2017 through May 2018, according to bank records.

There is evidence that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s dealings with CEFC China Energy. Rob Walker, a longtime Biden family friend, told the FBI in December 2020 that Joe and Hunter Biden attended a meeting with CEFC China Energy officials at the Four Seasons in Washington, D.C. And Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter Biden partner, has released text messages that indicate he met with Joe Biden in May 2017 to discuss a venture with CEFC China Energy.

Hunter Biden invoked his father in a threatening text message to CEFC China Energy executives on July 30, 2017, demanding payment as part of their business arrangement. The company wired Hunter Biden $100,000 days later, and would send him millions of dollars more over the ensuing months. In September 2017, Hunter Biden asked the building manager for his Washington, D.C., office to make a set of keys for his father and CEFC China executives, referring to them all as "office mates."

CEFC China Energy also paid Hunter Biden another $1 million to provide legal services to Patrick Ho, the CEFC China Energy executive who worked closely with Luft. Ho, who is described as Luft’s "co-conspirator" throughout the latest indictment, was indicted in November 2017 for attempting to bribe two African officials to purchase oil rights on behalf of CEFC China Energy. Ho’s meetings with the African officials were arranged by Vuk Jeremic, the CEFC China Energy consultant who contacted Hunter Biden about working with the firm in late 2015.

House Republicans have sought interviews with Jeremic, a former Serbian foreign minister, but he has declined the request.

The indictment provides other details about CEFC China Energy’s ties to the Chinese government, and covert activities aimed at helping Beijing.

According to prosecutors, Luft claimed that CEFC China Energy chairman Ye Jinming "has very close relations with President Xi Jinping." Hunter Biden met Ye numerous times, including at Ye’s house in Miami in February 2017, where Ye gave him an $80,000 diamond. Hunter Biden wrote a letter to Ye on June 1, 2017, offering "best wishes from my family and I."

"We are all hoping to see you here again soon, or in Shanghai," Biden wrote. He also touted "top relationships we have with the leaders both politically and economically in countries you are interested in expanding into."

Hunter Biden seemingly acknowledged concerns that CEFC China Energy was linked to the Chinese government. He referred to Patrick Ho as the "fucking spy chief of China" in audio recordings in 2018. In May 2017 text messages, Hunter Biden said that he wanted to avoid registering work for CEFC China Energy under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the same law that Luft is now accused of violating.

Neither Hunter Biden nor Woolsey, who served as Clinton’s CIA chief until 1995, have been charged with any crimes related to their work for CEFC China Energy.

Published under: China Corruption FARA Hunter Biden Joe Biden Justice Department

The Great Kowtow: Janet Yellen bows to China

Before a U.S. dignitary makes an overseas visit to a vital country abroad, such a person is briefed by the State Department -- about how to properly present oneself as a representative of the United States of America to a foreign national in terms they can understand, without unintentionally giving offense or sending the wrong message.

But then there's Janet Yellen, whose trip to China sent a very clear message to China, just through her body language, but presumably not the one she meant:

 

 

Cripes, look at that bowing to a top leader of one of the world's foremost currency-manipulating nations...bow, bow again, bow again...it's as if she's saying she's so glad she got to see this guy after so much groveling to get that meeting she just couldn't help herself. 

The Chinese, though, would have taken a different message from that groveling ... that she was groveling, or, kowtowing, to use an earlier term. If they were really savvy, which is a possibility, they might have surmised that she was probably terrified she would be fired from her job, as has been swirling around the rumor mill for months, and thus made her bows as a gesture of thanks for showing old Joe Biden back home that she wasn't insignificant.

Whatever it was, it was a bad message of submission and weakness to send, and Yellen should have known better. She is an adult of some seasoning, after all, and should have known to not bow to a foreign dignitary for that reason alone. But even if she didn't know any better, she would have had access to the finest in diplomatic coaching to ensure that she not blunder -- which she actually did twice, not just in the bowing but in getting the Chinese official's name wrong. She should have been able to send clear message to her less-than-benevolent-minded opponent across the Pacific without indicating American submission. But instead, she bowed.

And that's more than a little faux pas -- because bowing is barely ever done in China.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the custom of bowing in China:

The kowtow is the highest sign of reverence in Han Chinese culture, but its use has become extremely rare since the collapse of Imperial China. In many situations, the standing bow has replaced the kowtow. However, in modern Chinese societies, bowing is not as formalized as in Japan, South Korea and North Korea. Bowing is normally reserved for occasions such as marriage ceremonies[5] and as a gesture of respect for the deceased, although it still sometimes used for more formal greetings.[6] In China, three bows are customarily executed at funerals including state funerals,[7] ancestral worship, and at special ceremonies in commemoration of pater patriae Sun Yat-sen.[8][9]

As in Japan and Korea, public figures may bow formally to apologize. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao bowed and offered his condolences to stranded railway passengers;[10] Taiwanese Defense Minister Chen Chao-min bowed in apology following a faux pas concerning the shooting of former President Chen Shui-bian in 2004.[11]

Turns out the big-league of bowing can be found in Japan and Korea, where, as with everything that is done in those countries, those gestures are a nuanced art.  Americans who are unfamiliar with the custom would have to be coached on how to do that right, too. Recall the hysteria in the media about the prospect of President Trump accidentally commiting a faux pas around the issue of greetings in Japan. And Yellen in China, where mistakes might just matter? Not so much.

It's notable that Yellen's counterpart, He Lifeng, sure as heck wasn't going to bow. They don't do that in his country. Hers? Well, he sees what he sees.

For the rest of us, it looks like Yellen actually mixed up Japan with China -- and basically indicated to both that doesn't know much about either place.

But ironically, this faux pas of submissiveness projected came as Yellen yakked a lot in her press briefing about the importance of clear communication with China. 

If you were Chinese, what would you think after that bowing spectacle? She sure as heck was communicating something very clearly, and well, since she brought it up...

All this, so that Yellen could have her meeting and photo op with the Chicoms, a nation that is openly hostile to U.S. economic interests, our Navy and our ally Taiwan, and which is actively working to undercut the U.S. in the world's developing countries through its One Belt, One Road initiative.

What did she discuss after making those multiple bows? According to her own press release, it was bilateral trade disputes, national security and human rights issues, (with clear communication paramount), and getting China to pony up on greening its economy and shelling out for global warming projects as well as giving the third world on its string debt relief (instead of taking their strategic ports and roads as the world's top-seed repo men). 

Sound like a set of demands that the Chinese will heed now that they've got the United States bowing to them? These things are actually China's strategy for world dominion. They're not going to change course because Janet Yellen bowed to them.

They got that for free.

Image: Twitter screen shot



“Joe Biden is great on immigration. I guess depends on your perspective. If you’re a human trafficker, or drug dealer, or all those migrants wearing the Biden let us in shirts, you’d give him an A-plus, plus, but the American people would give him an F. The crisis we said our border was not only entirely predictable. It was predicted. I predicted it last fall that if you campaign all year long on open borders, amnesty, and health care for illegals, you’re going to get more migrants at the border. That’s exactly what’s happened every month since the election.”                      SEN. TOM COTTON


Growing Chinese expat communities in the United States and Mexico — desperate to access their money back home — and cartels sitting on piles of dollars from illicit drug sales in the United States are creating opportunities for themselves. And problems for law enforcement.


Exclusive – Former DNI John Ratcliffe Questions if Joe Biden Is Compromised by China

China - Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at a luncheon hosted by the Mayor's office. (Photo by Tim Rue/Corbis via Getty Images)
Tim Rue/Corbis via Getty Images

Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe, in an exclusive interview with SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday, asked why President Joe Biden has not done more in response to Chinese “transgressions” against the U.S., questioning if he was compromised.

Ratcliffe, in the interview with host Breitbart News Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle, listed a litany of things China has done to disrespect the U.S.:

Literally from the day Joe Biden got in charge, we saw this sea change of how China treats us. Remember their diplomats came to Anchorage and literally pantsed Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan publicly, and from that point in time, they threatened to shoot down the Speaker of the House’s plane, they’ve harassed our own ships and planes, they’ve flown their spy craft over our military sites, they’ve moved their military and surveillance equipment into Cuba…not to mention the fact that they’ve essentially given the middle finger to the Biden administration on helping at all with investigations into what killed a million Americans from COVID, or the hundreds of thousands dying from you know, Chinese fentanyl.

China

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee nomination hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 5, 2020. (Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images)

“So all of those transgressions and the Biden administration won’t confront them, none of those,” he continued.

“So, you know, at some point you just have to, you have to recognize that, look, this is more than just being incompetent or that this is more than just being cowardly. At some point, you do have to factor in compromise and, like I said … we’ve now learned through the course of this, but it’s not even just President Biden and his family,” Ratcliffe said.

RELATED VIDEO — Biden: “I Applaud China for Stepping Up — Excuse Me, Canada”:

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“It’s Antony Blinken and Steve Ricchetti and half the people working in [the] Biden White House, having received, you know, millions of dollars from China through the Penn-Biden Center and other things over the years, and now we see these Chinese aggressions going unmatched at any level,” he continued.

“The disparagement of our national security posture is just incredibly dangerous,” he concluded.

China

U.S. President Joe Biden meets with China’s President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, November 15, 2021. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.

Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on TwitterTruth Social, or on Facebook.

Nolte: Secret Service Vet Says ‘Only Family’ Could Sneak Cocaine into White House

Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, during a state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, June 22, 2023. Biden and Modi announced a series of defense and …
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Secret Service veteran Dan Bongino says only the family of the president could sneak cocaine into the White House.

Hunter Biden is the president’s son. FYI.

“There’s absolutely ZERO chance anyone other than a family member brought that cocaine inside the White House complex,” Bongino tweeted Thursday. “No chance that would make it past the mag/security checkpoints. Family bypasses those.”

For those who don’t know, an unzippered bag containing cocaine was found in the White House Sunday. The Secret Service is currently investigating, which should be terribly difficult in one of the most secure buildings in the world, and one filled with surveillance cameras.

At first, as Americans have come to expect, we were lied to about the cocaine being found in a highly-trafficked part of the White House. This means anyone who was not named Hunter Biden could have left it there. Far-left Politico immediately rushed to the aid of the White House to loudly proclaim “White House Cocaine Culprit Unlikely to Be Found”!!!!

Politico is nothing if not a good dog.

“[O]ne official familiar with the investigation cautioned that the source of the drug was unlikely to be determined given that it was discovered in a highly trafficked area of the West Wing,” Politico helpfully reported in the hopes America would shrug and say, Oh, well. I’ll guess we’ll never know. Let’s move on.

Another official helpfully told Politico, “Even if there were surveillance cameras, unless you were waving it around, it may not have been caught… It’s a bit of a thoroughfare. People walk by there all the time.”

You see all kinds of people not named Hunter Biden walk by there all the time. All kinds of entitled people, see? All kinds of people not named Hunter Biden who think they can get away with anything, including snorting coke in the White House, stroll by this part of the White House, see? People like that are everywhere and have access to this highly-trafficked public area, see?

Except.

The lie collapsed and we now know the unzippered bag of cocaine was found in a much more secure area, an area so secure, even Biden sycophant Andrea Mitchell was forced admit  “just average people just can’t get in there[.]”

Well, how about that?

Is Hunter Biden just average?

Hey, I’m just asking questions here.

Of that highly-secure entrance where just average people just can’t get in, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) confirmed what Bongino said…

“I’ve been in and out of that entrance a million times. It’s one of the most heavily secured and constantly surveilled places on earth,” tweeted Lee. “They keep detailed records on who enters and exits and when. I find it difficult to accept that they can’t figure out who put the cocaine there.”

“This entrance is used by very few people—just White House staff and people with an pre-approved appointment in the West Wing,” Lee added. “Non-staff have to go through multiple layers of security screening, and can enter only after they’ve been vetted and approved by the Secret Service.”

“Also, as my friend [Dan Bongino] just reminded me,” Lee continued, “pretty much everyone who enters the West Wing has to empty their pockets, and the Secret Service would immediately notice and stop anyone walking in with even a small bag of white powder.”

Transsexuals running around the White House naked. Open bags of cocaine left in highly secure areas of the White House… What a relief dignity has returned to DC.

Can I say it? Someone needs to say it, so I’m going to say it… This cocaine mystery is the dumbest mystery in the world. Hey, I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before, and if I am, I will say so, but… Come on! Hunter Biden is an entitled gangster who knows he can get away with anything, and he also happens to be a degenerate drug addict with access to the White House without fear of being searched. Yes, I could be wrong, but can we all stop talking around The Obvious?

Motive, opportunity… Come on, y’all.

As far as I’m concerned, if this ”mystery” is never solved, that’s proof the coke belonged to Hunter Biden. Because 1) it can’t remain a mystery for long, and 2) Hunter is the only one the White House would cover up for.

This is not rocket science.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNCFollow his Facebook Page here.

China: White House Cocaine Scandal Proves America’s Status as ‘Drug-Infested Nation’

UNITED STATES - APRIL 24: A U.S. flag redesigned with marijuana leaves blows in the wind as DCMJ.org holds a protest in front of the U.S. Capitol on Monday, April 24, 2017, to call on Congress to reschedule the drug classification of marijuana. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

The Chinese government propaganda outlet Global Times mocked the ongoing mystery of the discovery of cocaine in the West Wing of the White House in a column Thursday, calling America generally “drug-infested” and condemning reports that law enforcement may not be able to identify the cocaine’s owner as “ridiculous.”

The state outlet also used the scandal as an attempt to absolve the Chinese Communist Party of its substantial role in global fentanyl trafficking and the ongoing opioid crisis in America.

For years, law enforcement officials have accused China of selling precursor substances to Mexican drug cartels later used to make fentanyl in the Western Hemisphere, much of which then crosses the northern border. The Global Times admitted to China’s role in manufacturing those products but dismissed them as legal under Chinese law and not comparable to the cocaine reportedly found in the White House.

The Washington Post first reported on Monday that security officials in the White House had found a mysterious powdery substance inside the building that later tested positive for cocaine. White powders could present a major security risk, as several high-grade poisons — including anthrax and ricin — can come in the form of powder.

On Thursday, the Secret Service confirmed to Breitbart News that officials had found the cocaine in a small plastic bag near a West Wing entrance. The area is reportedly a “working” area not typically frequented by public tours but often receiving staffers or officials in the administration of President Joe Biden whose offices are elsewhere. The Washington, DC, outlet Politico reported, citing anonymous sources, that officials believe it will be “very difficult” to identify the owner of the drug.

Referring to the Politico report, the Global Times explained in a column on Thursday:

While cocaine was found at the presidential palace of the world’s most powerful country, a location known for its high level of security and extensive protection measures, US officials are unable to identify the responsible party and attribute it to the limitations of White House surveillance cameras. Isn’t it ridiculous to rely on such a feeble excuse to navigate through this situation?

The state newspaper predicted no “actual result from the promised investigation” into the discovery of the drug and went on to claim that drug use by presidents or in the White House was a common historical phenomenon and a product of America’s culture, presumably inferior to Chinese communist authoritarianism.

“The presence of drugs in the White House serves as a perfect example of the inability of the US, as a drug-infested nation, to manage illegal substances effectively,” the Chinese propaganda outlet asserted, calling Biden “the face of the drug epidemic in the country.”

“With illegal substances infiltrating the White House and US presidents setting an example as drug users, one wonders if the US can ever truly eradicate its drug crisis,” the outlet proclaimed, citing Chinese regime-approved “experts” that Democrats in particular “call for looser drug regulation, which means they indulge drugs.”

The Chinese government, through its media outlets, has, for years, condemned American “values” as inferior to Chinese communism because of the existence of drug use in the United States.

“Drug abuse in American society is very rampant with addiction multiplying sharply in many areas. It is hard to find even one young person in the country who hasn’t tried drugs,” state media proclaimed in 2018.

“In the U.S., consuming marijuana is considered a private affair or even a manifestation of personality and taste,” the Global Times observed with disgust a year later, comparing marijuana use to abuse of highly concentrated fentanyl, a deadly opioid.

The Communist Party denies that drug abuse is a problem in China and refuses to accept any responsibility for massive sales of fentanyl precursor drugs to Mexican cartels. As Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram explained last year, “What we know is that China is providing chemicals to Mexico, to the criminal drug networks that are then mass-producing these fake prescription pills.”

“They’re being sold as if they were Xanax, as if they were Oxy, as if they were Percocet. But there’s no Xanax, no Oxy, no Percocet in them. They’re fentanyl. But it isn’t just young people that we see, it’s also older Americans,” she noted.

A report by the analytics firm Chainalysis, published in May, estimated that Chinese fentanyl precursor suppliers collected about $38 million in payments for the substances via cryptocurrency between 2018 and 2023.

The government of radical leftist Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged China’s role in the fentanyl crisis in a letter to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in April in which he cordially requested that the Communist Party help Mexico identify ships trafficking the offending substances into the country. China replied by denying that any such activity was occurring.

On Thursday, the Global Times celebrated China for its alleged “extraordinary achievements” in its drug war, “a resounding response to the vicious and baseless smears as well as buck-passing from the US on the issue.” It claimed that “Chinese people are not familiar with ‘fentanyl'” due to this alleged success and blamed the United States for the prevalence of the drug in the country.

In the same article, the Global Times admitted that suppliers can freely generate precursor substances under the Chinese government.

“Disregarding these intensive drug-control efforts by China, the US has hyped that the country is ‘sourcing fentanyl precursor chemicals from China,’ trying to put the label of ‘drug trafficker’ on China,” the state newspaper claimed.

“This kind of hype is very amateurish. The ‘fentanyl precursors’ mentioned by the US are actually chemicals that can be used in the production of fentanyl, but they are ordinary commodities that are not controlled under international drug conventions and Chinese law,” it revealed.

“A recent discovery of cocaine in the White House once again exposed the chaotic management over drugs in the US,” the article concluded.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

Brnovich: China Is ‘Intentionally’ Contributing to U.S. Drug Crisis ‘to Undermine our Country’

 

IAN HANCHETT

17 Dec 20210

1:22

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Arizona Attorney General and Republican senatorial candidate Mark Brnovich said that drug precursors used by drug cartels to manufacture meth and fentanyl pills are coming from China, and he believes China is doing so on purpose “to undermine our country and to undermine values.”

Brnovich said, [relevant remarks begin around 2:05] “I would remind everyone, including the Biden administration, that the cartels control everything that goes across our southern border. And whether that’s human beings or whether it’s these drugs that are killing our children, they are making a profit and they are pushing this into our country. And one of the things, Dana, I think that’s so underreported is that we know, as prosecutors, I was a gang prosecutor, federal prosecutor, the precursor drugs are coming in from China. China’s doing this intentionally, I believe, to undermine our country and to undermine values. And then the cartels get those precursor chemicals. They’re making meth, they’re making these fake fentanyl pills, and then they’re flooding them into our market.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

 

 

Chinese Intermediaries Launder Cartels' Drug Proceeds in the United States

From the U.S. to China to the cartels

By Andrew R. Arthur 

 

In a post last week on drugs and the border, I referenced the following quote from the DEA: "Due to China's currency control restrictions, Asian TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] have taken advantage of the availability of U.S. dollars belonging to Mexican and Colombian TCOs in the United States by acquiring the U.S. dollars in exchange for the payment of Colombian/Mexican pesos in the respective drug source country." A recent federal court conviction in Chicago and a Reuters article on that case explain how the scheme works, at least on a small scale.

The DOJ press release on that case explains that one "Xianbing Gan" was convicted on three counts of money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, in a scheme to move drug proceeds from the Windy City to China, and then on to drug traffickers in Mexico.

Reuters fleshes out the scheme. Moving vast sums of illicit drug money out of the United States is a difficult — and for the perpetrators, dangerous — task, as the article explains:

The only thing tougher than moving illegal drugs across borders is getting the profits back to Mexico's cartels, U.S. officials said. Cash is heavy, and transporting it exposes traffickers to lots of risk. Putting it into the banking system is perilous, too. The U.S. and Mexican financial systems have been geared to detect dirty money.

The scheme described bypassed all of those impediments. Gan's case was premised on the testimony of one of his conspirators, a Singapore national working out of New York named Lim Seok Pheng, who became a cooperating witness for the government after she was arrested in May 2018 at JFK on suspicion of laundering money.

Lim would collect vast sums of cash (between $150,000 and $1 million at a clip) from contacts in the cartels in New York and Chicago (as well as other cities, apparently), using burner phones and contact information. She would then work with U.S.-based Chinese merchants to convert the money to yuan in banks in China in real time. Lim would hand the merchants the cash, and they would transfer the money from their accounts in China to Gan's account in that country.

Why would those merchants be willing to do this? The Chinese government limits the amount of cash that its citizens can transfer out of the country to $50,000 per year, but authorities in that country would (likely) think that there was nothing amiss in transfers between two bank accounts in China. Oh, and the merchants got a premium on the money that they transferred, but there is no evidence that they were aware of the provenance of the cash they received.

To get the money from China to Mexico, Gan allegedly would then engage in the same sort of transfer on the southern side of the border. Cash would be transferred from Gan's account to those of Chinese merchants with access to pesos in Mexico.

Gan (who ran a seafood business out of Guadalajara, Mexico, exporting jellyfish to China) contends that he was a patsy for another Chinese national named Pan Haiping, who duped him into using his Chinese account to launder the money. Haiping is in custody in Mexico awaiting extradition to the United States on money laundering charges (using Gan's and other Chinese bank accounts) handed down by a grand jury in March 2019. According to U.S. authorities, the laundered money was then transferred to Mexican drug cartels.

Reuters reports that Chinese money brokers in Mexico have avoided the conflicts amongst the cartels themselves, and have (according to an unnamed DEA agent) "coordinat[ed] money contracts with both the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels on the same day" — no mean feat.

If all of this sounds familiar, it is akin to a "hawala" scheme, in which (overly simply) money is paid to a broker in the United States (a "hawaladar"), and a similar amount in local funds is provided to another individual abroad.

As the Treasury Department and INTERPOL have explained, hawalas are cost-effective (much more so than converting dollars into the local currency and then having it delivered abroad), efficient (taking one to two days — at most), reliable, avoid bureaucracy, and largely untaxable. Best of all — from the prospective of a drug TCO — hawalas leave no paper trail.

Hawalas came to the fore in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the "9/11 Commission") explained:

Al Qaeda frequently moved the money it raised by hawala. ... In some ways, al Qaeda had no choice after its move to Afghanistan in 1996: first, the banking system there was antiquated and undependable; and second, formal banking was risky due to the scrutiny that al Qaeda received after the August 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, including UN resolutions against it and the Taliban. Bin Ladin relied on the established hawala networks operating in Pakistan, in Dubai, and throughout the Middle East to transfer funds efficiently.

Note that hawalas and other similar informal schemes rely on "trust" between the remitter and the hawaladar, but the drug scheme described did not necessarily require such an archaic notion. To the degree that any trust was involved: (1) the scheme was lucrative for all involved, and they would necessarily have an interest in its viability; and (2) Mexican TCOs have their own means of ensuring compliance.

Interestingly, as per Reuters, such Chinese money launderers are undercutting their Mexican and Colombian competition by as much as half, because they can charge big fees (up to 10 percent) on Chinese nationals who are seeking to avoid that country's restrictive currency controls. This, in turn, "allows the Chinese money brokers ... to charge traffickers nominal fees of just a few percentage points. The money launderers still turn a handsome profit while locking in a steady supply of coveted dollars and euros from cartel customers."

The money is good. Lim, in her 2019 plea agreement on money laundering, admitted that she laundered approximately $48 million in drug cash with Gan and Pan Haiping from 2016 to September 2017, taking (according to the government) a .5 percent commission (or in the neighborhood of $240,000; Gan was convicted of laundering more than $530,000 in cartel cash).

Nor were they alone. Charges are pending in Virginia and Oregon against two other alleged Chinese money laundering groups.

That said, Reuters reports that this is not the only method that Mexican cartels use to launder their money, sometimes opting for "trade-based money laundering schemes". For example, that outlet explains that Mexico's Financial Intelligence Unit said publicly in July that Chinese nationals who were laundering money for the Jalisco New Generation cartel used drug proceeds in order to buy bulk orders of shoes from China, which they would then resell in Mexico to get cash.

In any event, cartel money laundering by Chinese rings is a big problem for law enforcement. There is little or no visibility into the Chinese banking system for outsiders (the article describes the country as "a veritable black hole for U.S. and Mexican authorities", although the Chinese government contends it is willing to help, while "stress[ing] the need for the two countries to work on the 'principle of respecting each other's laws, equality and mutual benefit'"), and the sentencing memorandum in Gan's case (cited by Reuters) suggests that "Chinese money brokers based in Mexico 'have come to dominate international money laundering markets'".

Growing Chinese expat communities in the United States and Mexico — desperate to access their money back home — and cartels sitting on piles of dollars from illicit drug sales in the United States are creating opportunities for themselves. And problems for law enforcement.

According to the DEA alert, the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel in Mexico, using chemicals largely sourced from China, are primarily responsible for most of the fentanyl being trafficked inside the United States.

Colorado Cops Bust Alleged Fentanyl Ring with Ties to Mexican Cartel

Jefferson County, Colorado, West Metro Drug Taskforce
Jefferson County, Colorado, West Metro Drug Taskforce

The Jefferson County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) West Metro Drug Task Force arrested ten alleged drug ring members suspected of distributing fentanyl-laced counterfeit oxycodone pills, methamphetamine, heroin, and other drugs in and around the Denver metro area. Investigators say the group purchased the narcotics directly from a Mexican drug cartel. As of Thursday, the street value of the narcotics seized by investigators totaled more than $5 million.

The arrests followed a Colorado Grand Jury indictment of sixteen suspects on 116 felony charges. The indictments came at the end of a nine-month-long West Metro Drug Task Force investigation. The investigation began as a drug distribution case involving methamphetamine and counterfeit oxycodone pills containing fentanyl. Task Force Investigators used a Title III Wiretap and undercover operatives to develop information on illegal narcotics transactions that uncovered details of the drug trafficking operation and a host of additional crimes.

Jefferson County Colorado Sheriff's Office

Jefferson County Colorado Sheriff’s Office

The investigation, subsequent search, and arrest activities associated with the law enforcement operation resulted in the seizure of more than 400 pounds of methamphetamine, 325,000 pills containing fentanyl, three kilograms of cocaine, one pound of heroin, and 1.5 pounds of fentanyl powder. The amount of fentanyl seized by West Metro Drug Task Force investigators equates to over 350,000 lethal doses. Authorities also seized seventeen firearms — many of which had been reported stolen.

The task force presented the results of their investigation to a grand jury through Colorado’s First Judicial District Attorney’s Office. The grand jury subsequently returned indictments against 16 individuals for charges including the unlawful distribution or sale of a controlled substance, unlawful possession with intent to sell or distribute a controlled substance, possession of a weapon by a previous offender/special offender, criminal attempt second-degree kidnapping, criminal attempt aggravated motor vehicle theft, vehicular eluding, leaving the scene of an accident, first-degree criminal trespass, and obstructing a peace officer.

Six suspects indicted by the grand jury remain at large. Officials did not name the yet-to-be-arrested suspects.

The West Metro Drug Task Force is comprised of deputies and officers from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the Colorado Joint Counterdrug Task Force, Golden Police Department, Lakewood Police Department, and the Wheat Ridge Police Department. The First Judicial District Attorney’s Office and many other Colorado law enforcement agencies assisted throughout the investigation and contributed to the successful indictments of multiple high-level drug dealers, officials stated.

Ten suspects that have been arrested are:

  • Thiago Escalante-Torres, 22
  • Angelo Gonzalez-Hernandez, 21
  • Johnathan Kincaid, 41
  • Stephanie Larson, 25
  • Francisco Romero Portella, 35
  • Jonathan Ortega-Carias, 25
  • Pablo Ramirez-Martinez aka Alexander Ramirez-Martinez, 26
  • Felicia Redearth, 42
  • Daniel Emilio Torres-Torres, 23
  • Kristy Wilson, 39

According to a Drug Enforcement Administration Public Safety Alert, Fentanyl remains the deadliest drug threat facing the United States. It is a highly addictive synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. An amount small enough to fit on the tip of a pencil is considered a potentially deadly dose. According to the DEA alert, the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel in Mexico, using chemicals largely sourced from China, are primarily responsible for most of the fentanyl being trafficked inside the United States.

Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol.  Before his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.


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