Kevin McCarthy Pledges Subpoenas for 51 Intel Agents in Wake of Hunter Biden ‘Twitter Files’
71
PAM KEY
11 Dec 20220
2:26
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said Saturday on FNC’s “One Nation” that he will bring the 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was Russia collusion to testify at a congressional hearing.
Host Brian Kilmeade asked, “We saw the revelations coming out of Twitter as Elon Musk is unmasking the corruption that existed there and the denials that they testified about. So for you personally you have another move you want to make. Not only do we want to hear from the former executives of Twitter and the other entities, but you have something else you want to say.”
McCarthy said, Yeah, I do. This is egregious what we are finding. They should not have section 230 to start out with, but we also have to go further. What did Facebook and Google do as well because they became an arm of the Democratic Party and an arm of government.”
He continued, “Those 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was all wrong — was Russia collusion — many of them have a security clearance. We are going to bring them before committee. I’m going to have them have a hearing. Why did they sign it? Why did they lie to the American public? A Clapper, a Brennan? Why did you use the reputation that America was able to give to you more information, but use it for a political purpose and lie to the American public?”
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’ investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
The Group the Chinese Communists Fear the Most
By Jeffrey Folks
I have rarely heard it mentioned in the mainstream media, but, according to reports, during the 1990s in communist China, thirty thousand members of Falun Gong were rounded up and executed. The founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, fled China and now lives in the U.S., while in China members of the order went underground. According to Freedom House, "Falun Gong practitioners across China have since [July 1999] been subjected to widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, horrific torture, and extrajudicial killing — abuses which continue today." Nonetheless, there are still some 100 million practitioners worldwide, and the movement continues to grow.
Information concerning the repression of Falun Gong is a Chinese state secret, with severe penalties for anyone attempting to obtain data. As the Falun Data Infocenter puts it: "The CCP has also used political and financial influence around the world to either keep journalists silent, or drive false narratives about Falun Gong." With total control inside China and compliance by foreign journalists, the Chinese Communist Party has driven a false narrative that minimizes the number of Falun Gong practitioners and hides data on the number of those abducted, tortured, killed, and killed for their organs, thus totally obscuring the record. At the same time, Chinese and foreign media continue to suggest that the victim is the abuser: the false idea that Falun Gong is a cult with dangerous potential.
For anyone who has studied the history of or practiced Falun Gong, the enormity of this continuing abuse and misinformation is obvious. Falun gong is a benign practice of meditation, exercise, and moral instruction with no political ties of any sort, but it is often represented, even by well-meaning Western journalists, as a "cult" or as a right-wing anti-CCP organization, as in a recent article in the Guardian, relying heavily on statements by Media Matters. According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
If those journalists would do their homework, beginning with studying Falun Gong websites and the book Zhuan Falun by Li Hongzhi, instead of relying on the well funded Chinese "zero out" campaign, they would realize that Falun Gong is an uplifting instruction based on traditional, conservative Chinese practices.
The story of the Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong is a classic example of totalitarian intolerance of competing ideas, and it involves both propaganda and physical terror. A careful examination of the record proves that the response of the communist Chinese regime is not very different from that of ancient regimes toward their own enslaved peoples. Despite their vast power, totalitarian leaders are fearful and at times even paranoid, as was Stalin, and the flip-side of fear is repression.
In reality, Falun Gong is a complex spiritual practice involving qijong-like exercises, positive thinking, and moral belief based on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. As a practitioner myself, I know how Falun Gong can transform an individual from illness to health, confusion to knowledge, and intolerance to open-mindedness. It is obvious to me how a totalitarian regime would view Falun Gong as a threat, as indeed it would be to any form of deceit, corruption, or intolerance. As Falun Gong spread in China during the 1990s, at one point with 60 to 100 million followers in China alone, the practice became a threat to a government that had once encouraged it as a healthy "money-saving" vehicle and a social safety valve for a dissatisfied citizenry. Yet within months, beginning in July 1999, perhaps 100,000 followers were arrested and 30,000 executed. Even now, nearly 4,000 practitioners were arrested in 2021 (latest figures).
It is critical to consider the magnitude of this repression, with between two and four million Falun Gong followers "detained" in forced labor camps between 2000 and 2008 alone. Chinese policy toward Falun Gong is similar to the more widely publicized repression of Uyghurs, 1.5 million of whom have reportedly been detained in China, with hundreds of thousands of others subjected to forced sterilization, forced abortion, and religious suppression, and with the razing or damaging of 16,000 mosques. Like totalitarian regimes of the past, the CCP appears willing to employ the most ruthless tactics in order to secure its hold on the country.
Though Falun Gong is not a political movement, the exponential growth of Falun Gong during the 1990s might well have pressured authorities to change, and as soon as China's leaders recognized this threat, they suppressed Falun Gong with a heavy hand. One could hardly be truthful, compassionate, and forbearing and lend one's support to a communist regime governed by a few thousand members of the political elite intent on benefiting from their rule at the expense of the general population. Falun Gong teaches a form of gentleness and goodness that threatens the lies and violence of any totalitarian government.
One must ask: if the Chinese communists are willing to imprison millions of ethnic and religious minorities and to murder tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, what are they capable of in the future? How many lives are they willing to expend in a takeover of Taiwan? And once Taiwan is taken, how many Taiwanese will they imprison and execute? In the event of a war with Japan or with the United States, how many are they willing to see die, on both sides? And if Chinese communism were ever to achieve world domination, what kind of future could we expect? As Christians, probably something not unlike what the Uyghurs and Falun Gong have already experienced.
At the same time, the specter of Chinese repression should open our eyes to the remarkable value of our own system of democratic capitalism. The CCP has diminished Falun Gong in China, but, like all religious and spiritual practices, Falun Gong has found a safe home in America, at least in principle, though the Biden administration continues to restrict religious practice, to challenge religious rights in the courts and in agency practices, and to unleash the power of agencies like the Justice Department and IRS against the open practice of religion. Many of the same tactics adopted in communist China are accepted by progressives in our own country, including the encouragement of birth control and abortion, even late-term abortion and infanticide after birth.
For the present, there is still a difference between totalitarianism and democracy as practiced in the USA. Now is a time when American citizens, media, government, and corporations need to see clearly that communist China is a totalitarian government and to recognize what it is capable of. China's record toward Falun Gong, a violent repression that continues today, is one element in a string of crackdowns and arrests. We do not need to send a balloon over China to understand the nature of their regime, but we do need to recognize the enormity of its abuses and take appropriate actions to defend ourselves.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Image: tookapic via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
Democrats Dodge the Real Reparations
How about all the damage caused by the China virus and Islamic terror?
Thu Oct 15, 2020
Lloyd Billingsley
“As a nation, we can only truly thrive when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive. Our painful history of slavery has evolved into structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions.”
That was California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a September 30 signing statement for Assembly Bill 3121 which “establishes a nine-member task force to inform Californians about slavery and explore ways the state might provide reparations.” For all its faults, California was never part of the Confederacy, and Californians might wonder about a stronger case for reparations from damages caused by the China virus.
Evidence points to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, recipient of funds from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which banned “gain of function” research in 2014 because of danger that a manipulated virus might be released into the population. The NIH revived the dangerous research in 2017 but kept it secret. The Wuhan Institute was an ideal place to hide gain of function, and Anthony Fauci backed the lab with more than $7 million. Dr. Fauci has been evasive about what, exactly, went on at Wuhan but there can be no dispute about the aftermath.
The China virus claimed more than 200,000 deaths in the United States alone and touched three leaders of G7 nations: President Trump, British prime minister Boris Johnson, and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, whose wife Sophie tested positive for the coronavirus in March. The economic damages are undeniable: millions unemployed, businesses going bankrupt, mounting debt, and all the social wreckage now on display.
President Trump is on record that this was all “China’s fault,” and China is going to pay “a big price” for what they’ve done to the United States and the world. One U.S. state is already taking measures. In April, Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt 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, California Democrat, 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.” And Feinstein had only praise for China, “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.”
Indeed, as Feinstein told James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal during a 2006 visit to Shanghai, the San Francisco Democrat had been coming to the Communist nation for 31 years. Feinstein compared Tiananmen Square to Kent State, and as Rosemarie Ho reported in The Nation, Democrats in general and Feinstein in particular ignored the Communist crackdown against Hong Kong.
As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, the Chinese spy on Feinstein’s staff for 20 years even attended Chinese Consulate functions for the senator, who has her own version of Hunter Biden. As Ben Weingarten reported in the Federalist in 2018, Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum has “profited handsomely from the greatly expanded China trade she supported.”
None of this has touched off an investigation, which confirms that FBI favors for Democrats go far beyond Hillary Clinton. A party that functions as a cheerleader for China will not seek any reparations from China, or any other entity that has inflicted vast damage on the United States.
On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists claimed nearly 3,000 American lives and caused billions in damages. If that not a case for reparations, it is hard to know what one would look like. Democrats made no case, and the president formerly known as Barry Soetoro shipped billions in cash to Iran, the major sponsor of terrorism in the world.
President Trump pushed back on terrorism, taking out Iranian master terrorist Soleimani and ISIS boss al-Baghdadi. Democrats were critical of these actions, and their diversionary push for slavery reparations has no merit. Neither does Gov. Newsom’s charge of “structural racism,” which as David Azerrad explains, lacks proof on the historical, legislative, and even the subconscious level.
The nation can only thrive, Gov. Newsom contends, “when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive.” As it happens, the most powerful figure in recent California history is the African American Willie Brown. The thriving assembly speaker set up his girlfriend Kamala Harris in lucrative sinecures and backed her career all the way to candidacy for what she has called a “Harris administration.”
Meanwhile, old-money Democrats are grooming Gov. Newsom for a presidential run in 2024. Should he succeed, the nation would never get reparations for terrorism or the China virus. On the other hand, the entire nation would soon look like California, whose rapid decline reminds Bill Maher of “Italy in the 70s or something.” As President Trump says, we’ll have to see what happens.
Peter Schweizer: Hunter Biden Still Owns Ten Percent of Chinese Firm BHR
4,583
ROBERT KRAYCHIK
Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s second son, still owns a ten-percent stake in Chinese company Bohai Harvest RST (BHR), an investment firm he co-founded with funding from the Bank of China, noted Peter Schweizer, president of the government accountability Institute, senior contributor to Breitbart News, and author of Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite.
In episode 17 of the Drill Down, entitled “Hunter Biden’s Chinese Fortune,” Schweizer noted that Hunter Biden has not divested from BHR despite his father’s presidential campaign.
“The idea that Hunter could still profit off of the Chinese government if his father becomes president remains an incredible potential conflict [of interest],” observed Schweizer. “A conflict that seems all the more troubling when Joe Biden continues to dismiss China as a geopolitical threat.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyer claimed his client resigned from BHR’s board of directors, issuing a letter to this effect via the Washington Post. In September 2019, Schweizer highlighted the Washington Post‘s broad omissions in reporting on Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings during his father’s vice-presidential tenure.
The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler framed the aforementioned letter as a response to “Trump folks,” omitting any mention of Hunter Biden’s ongoing ownership stake in BHR.
Glenn Kessler
✔@GlennKesslerWP
Trump folks pushing a line that Hunter Biden never resigned from board, citing an apparently outdated database entry. (https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/bhr-english-4-14-20.pdf …) Now Hunter Biden's lawyer has obtained letter confirming he did resign in October, as originally reported. https://twitter.com/TimMurtaugh/status/1250585895960481799 …
Tim Murtaugh - Text TRUMP to 88022
✔@TimMurtaugh
When it was announced that Hunter Biden would be quitting the board of a Chinese equity firm, lots of news outlets credulously reported it.
Six months later, records indicate that Hunter has not, in fact, quit.
Will the mainstream media be following up? https://twitter.com/GOP/status/1250584309188177927 …
Schweizer said, “Biden’s lawyer claims that his client did resign, and has produced a document from Hunter’s China-based company saying as much. Maybe. But Hunter’s attorney did not address the more important problem – the fact that Hunter still owns a piece of the Chinese company, called BHR.”
“[BHR] is an investment vehicle, financed by the government of China, which has conducted at least two-point-five billion dollars worth of deals,” added Schweizer, “and Hunter Biden has a ten percent equity piece of that.”
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.
