3:25
Sen. Ted Cruz is laying out a zero-tolerance policy for Hollywood studios that willingly censor their movies to please Chinese Communist officials, proposing new legislation that will block all federal assistance to the studios behind those film productions.
The senator called China “the single most dangerous geopolitical threat” in the world in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday.
Chinese officials want “to shape what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think,” Cruz said. Because Hollywood studios voluntarily change characters and plot points in order to gain access to the Chinese market, Chinese officials “control not just what audiences see in China but also what Americans see.”
In a bill he introduced Thursday, Sen. Cruz (R-Texas) is calling for Congress to cut off Hollywood studios from the federal assistance they receive if those studios censor their films for screening in China.
The senator had previously called for the elimination of Pentagon assistance to studios that cooperate with Chinese censors. But the version of the SCRIPT Act that he unveiled Thursday goes even further by suspending all federal assistance. Movie productions often request access to federal property and military equipment for filming purposes.
The SCRIPT Act — Stopping Censorship, Restoring Integrity, Protecting Talkies Act — will almost certainly face opposition from the major Hollywood studios, whose blockbuster movies often depend on the Chinese market to make money.
Sen. Cruz noted a few recent examples of Hollywood’s voluntary self-censorship, including Paramount’s upcoming Top Gun: Maverick, which eliminated the Taiwanese and Japanese flags from Tom Cruise’s iconic flight jacket . The sequel is a co-production with China’s Tencent Pictures.
“What message does it send that Maverick, an American icon, is apparently afraid of the Chinese communists? That’s ridiculous,” Cruz said.
The Disney-owned 20th Century removed all references to Freddie Mercury’s sexuality in Bohemian Rhapsody in order to gain access to Chinese cinemas. Disney also cast Scottish actress Tilda Swinton in a role that was originally meant to be a Tibetan monk in Marvel’s Doctor Strange.
Sen. Cruz said that he wants the SCRIPT Act to serve as a “wake up call for Hollywood.”
“Studios would be forced to choose between the assistance from the federal government or the money that they want from China,” he said.
Sen. Cruz introduced two other bills on Thursday that are intended to curb Chinese influence in the U.S.
The Blocking Evasive Attempts to Manipulate Signals Act — or BEAMS Act — would prevent China from exploiting FCC loopholes to broadcast Communist party propaganda to Americans from radio stations in Mexico or Canada.
The law would also apply to partially state-owned stations, such as Phoenix Television.
The Ending Chinese Medical Censorship and Cover Ups Act would sanction Chinese officials involved in the ongoing suppression of medical experts, journalists, and political dissidents.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com
Biden Sold Out America to
China While Working for Hollywood
Biden: "There is no
question that you've got the right guy with the right influence."
May 8, 2020
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism
Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer
focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Outside the JW Marriot in Los
Angeles, Rev. Eddie Perez Romero was being handcuffed by the LAPD.
Rev. Romero was holding up a
“Free China” sign outside a Chinese Ministry of Commerce conference. Inside was the LAPD's
boss Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, along with Governor Jerry Brown, and Vice
President Joe Biden, who were palling around with China’s future dictator, Xi
Jinping.
“My hope is that Vice President
Joseph Biden, Governor Jerry Brown and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will rise
above any pandering spirit, but as true statesmen, intentionally blur the
artificial line between the economy and human rights,” Rev. Romero said.
Biden though had a very
different agenda on his mind.
It was 2012 and Joe was
thinking about his future. A year earlier his best friend, Senator Chris Dodd,
had left the Senate to run the MPAA. The MPAA was Hollywood's trade association
and the movie industry, reading its own writing on the wall, wanted into China,
and was willing to sell its soul to make a deal.
Biden wanted Hollywood cash for
a future presidential campaign.
Dodd had been one of the
sleaziest figures in the Senate, even by the low standards of the era, eager to
do favors for any well-heeled industry from finance to entertainment. His
friendship with Biden gave him a direct pipeline into the Obama administration.
And Dodd gave Biden a pipeline into Hollywood.
Two years later, in 2014, Biden
began an address to the MPAA by joking, "there have been the rumors all
those years when Chris and I served in the Senate that although I was chairman,
he controlled me."
"We've just given new life
to those rumors," he continued, describing how he had left a meeting with
Obama and Chancellor Merkel, telling Obama that he had to address the MPAA.
"There is no question that
you've got the right guy with the right influence," Biden concluded.
And that’s exactly what Biden
had been proving in Los Angeles as he surrounded Xi with Hollywood tycoons,
especially Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major donor to his 2020 campaign, and cut a
deal with the Chinese thug to increase the quota of Hollywood movies allowed in
by the Chinese Communist regime.
"Some of you were there.
Literally when by end of that lunch we had a handshake," Biden boasted to
the MPAA. “The next year the number of blockbuster foreign films showing in
China has increased by over half and our share of the box office revenue has
doubled -- or your share of the box office revenue has doubled.”
“Keep me in mind for Chris'
assistant later,” he joked.
Biden understandably lost track
of the difference between “your share” and “our share” because Hollywood has
been a reliable fundraising machine for Biden. What was good for Hollywood was
also good for Biden. Katzenberg got Oriental Dream Works, a $330-million joint
venture with the PRC, and eventually hosted Biden's first Southern California
fundraiser which brought in $700K.
2012 was a big year for the
adulterous nuptials of Hollywood and the Chinese Communist Party.
A few months after the meeting
between Biden and Xi, China’s Wanda Group bought AMC Theaters for $2.6 billion.
The Wanda Group, run by a billionaire Communist oligarch with close ties to
regime officials, is working on a Communist theme park, and its investors
allegedly include Xi’s sister. Beyond just owning the theaters, Wanda owns the
Legendary Group which has a hand in a long list of movies from Spike Lee's
BlacKKKlansman, to Pokemon, along with the King Kong and Jurassic Park sequels.
The only reason Hollywood
movies can play in China is because the Communist leadership directly profits
from them and controls what goes into them, either directly through ownership,
or by forcing the industry to submit scripts for the approval of its Communist
censors. HUAC would be superfluous today. The big studios who make up the MPAA
are all working for the Communists. And they’re proud of it.
That’s why a Tibetan character
vanished from Doctor Strange (Disney has been the worst offender when it comes
to appeasing the Communist leadership), why Taiwanese and Japanese flag patches
vanished from Tom Cruise’s jacket in the Top Gun sequel (the movie was backed
by Tencent, the PRC social media monopoly whose social media controls allow the regime to censor dissent and which has its paws on
Wonder Woman, Venom and many other blockbusters), and why World War Z erased references to China covering up the origin of the zombie outbreak. That
act of censorship now appears prophetic.
Biden’s brokering of the
relationship between Hollywood and the Communist elite was more than financial,
it was also cultural. Hollywood traded access for control, not just over what
Chinese people saw, but what Americans were likely to see. Biden’s donors got
richer and American movies were reduced to a bunch of CG cartoons with limited
dialogue that had to win Communist approval.
And it wasn’t just Hollywood.
In 2013, a year after the Xi
event at the Marriot, Joe and Hunter Biden flew on Air Force Two to China. BHR
Partners was founded that year and included Hunter Biden as a board member. Underneath all the rhetoric about the
ennobling virtues of globalism was some very parochial and familial
profiteering.
The big Chinese partner in the
BHR arrangement was Harvest Fund
Management which, coincidentally
enough, in 2012 was targeting Hollywood with an $800 million investment fund. That same year, you
could find Bruno Wu, who had been working with Harvest, and Chris Dodd, along
with Harvey Weinstein, playing roles at the Asian Film Summit in Toronto. And
the money didn’t just go one way.
The Delaware Board of Trade was
incorporated in 2013. Despite its name, the DBOT was not a government agency,
but a penny stock startup which received a $3 million loan from New Castle
County.
New Castle County had approved
the issue of $15 million in revenue
bonds to fund the DBOT
"stock exchange" by touting the "globally recognized leaders in
the financial services industry" running it. DBOT’s founders included
people with experience in stock exchanges and financial services, and Dennis
Toner, who was described as a "top aide to Vice President Joe Biden."
Toner, Biden's deputy chief of
staff, is in the news for denying that Tara Reade ever told him anything.
Reade’s decision to tell Toner
and Ted Kaufman was a pretty poor one. Both are longtime Biden men and
considered as close to the boss as family. And they’ve reaped the benefits of
that closeness.
Emperor Caligula appointed his
horse to the Roman Senate. After Obama won, Ted Kaufman was temporarily
appointed to the Senate. If there was anything odd about appointing a Biden
advisor to sit in the Senate, it became odder when Senator Kaufman delivered the opening
statement in favor of Toner’s
appointment as Post Office Governor, by vouching for his “loyalty” working for
Joe Biden.
Reade might as well have taken
her complaint to Biden, as to Toner and Kaufman.
The current New Castle County
exec has since called DBOT’s founders criminals and threatened to sue after the
company was disposed of as a "distressed asset" in exchange for
shares of Ideanomics. Ideanomics is a Chinese crypto company trading as a penny
stock and the software that served as collateral for the loan has been described
as worthless. The chairman of Ideanomics is Wu.
The manager of DBOT-I LLC was
listed as John Hynansky. The car dealer is a Biden pal with extensive Ukrainian ties who
had lent Biden’s shady brother half a million dollars and had received $20 million in government loans to start a Porsche luxury car
dealership in the Ukraine.
Biden’s vaunted foreign policy
expertise has consisted of brokering deals between family members, donors, and
foreign interests. These deals haven’t been good for America, but they’ve
worked out very well for members of his crooked family, as well as assorted
donors, camp followers, and local boys.
But his biggest deal was
helping broker the Chinese takeover of the American entertainment industry.
Xi’s visit to Los Angeles hit
on all the right cultural notes. He schmoozed Hollywood bigwigs and their
errand boys, like Dodd and Biden, he watched a Lakers game, and cheered Obama’s 100,000 Strong China initiative to have a hundred thousand American students
study in the Communist dictatorship.
"I can say with confidence
my visit has been a full success," Xi declared.
In China, culture serves the
agenda of the Communist government. Unlike the Russians, who struggled vainly
to stem the impact of American culture, their Chinese counterparts decided to
control it at the source. Biden was a key figure in negotiating the terms on
which the PRC would control Hollywood.
In 1962, the Manchurian
Candidate depicted an effort by Communists in China, Russia, and elsewhere to
kidnap and brainwash American soldiers. The modern remake replaced the
Communists with a corporation and the Chinese doctor with a South African
geneticist. China could not be offended.
While Biden, Katzenberg, and Xi
were partying at the Marriot, human rights protesters were calling for freedom,
and being arrested by the henchmen of a one-party Democrat city and state for
their trouble.
Even while Biden was falsely
claiming that the Hollywood sellout would improve human rights in China, the
rise of China was already violating human rights in America. Now, as Chinese
drones fly over American cities, police stalk empty streets, social media
monopolies monitor every single phone, and Democrat officials dismiss the Bill
of Rights while locking up millions of people, our rights are gone.
And Joe Biden is the Manchurian
Candidate who long ago sold out the country he now seeks to rule.
JUST
FOLLOW THE DIRTY RED CHINA MONEY RIGHT INTO THEIR GREEDY TRAITORS’ POCKETS.
"The
Chinese Communist Party's vision for the future is global domination,"
Cruz said. "Unfortunately, Joe Biden isn't even aware that a battle is waging.
After decades in Washington, he has dismissed China over and over again and has
allowed his family to make money off their tyranny and deception. The United
States can prevail in this contest of nations so long as we have a president —
like President Trump — who is willing to stand up to China and hold them
accountable."
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
Ted
Cruz Describes Joe Biden's 'Sophisticated Corruption'
Cortney O'Brien
"Remember
simpler times when corruption was just $10,000 in a paper bag handed secretly
under a table in a smoky bar in Washington?" Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
reminisced on Sunday.
"Corruption
sadly has gotten much more sophisticated in Washington," Cruz continued in
his conversation with Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. "With
Joe Biden there is just a lot of questions about his family enriching
themselves in order to get policy decisions from Joe Biden."
A
lot of this year's impeachment trial focused on Hunter Biden and his conduct in
Ukraine, where he sat on the board of a corrupt gas company. They paid him $1
million a year.
"I
don't know about you but I've never had a Ukrainian gas company call me up and
say, 'Hey come serve on our board of directors,'" Cruz said. "That's
kind of out there."
Which
is strange, Cruz noted, because Hunter didn't speak Ukrainian and the only
thing he probably knows about gas is that he routinely filled up the gas tank
in his car. They only cared who his daddy was.
Cruz
then repeated President Trump's claim that Hunter got greedy and asked for $1.5
billion from China when he accompanied his dad on a trip to Beijing in 2013.
According to Trump and others, Hunter negotiated a deal to create a
joint-investment fund between his company, Rosemont Seneca, and a Chinese
state-run bank. Wanting influence with the vice president, they reportedly gave
him the money.
President
Trump: "China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what
happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine. So, I
would say that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they
start an investigation into the Bidens."
"They've
gotten sophisticated in this shakedown," Cruz said of the Bidens.
The
senator alleged that Biden's weak position on China has tainted his foreign
policy agenda. Murtaugh asked Cruz to expand on Biden's history of siding with
China and dismissing the CCP as a threat on the 2020 campaign trail, all of
which has earned him the nickname, "Beijing Biden."
"The
Chinese Communist Party's vision for the future is global domination,"
Cruz said. "Unfortunately, Joe Biden isn't even aware that a battle is waging.
After decades in Washington, he has dismissed China over and over again and has
allowed his family to make money off their tyranny and deception. The United
States can prevail in this contest of nations so long as we have a president —
like President Trump — who is willing to
stand up to China and hold them accountable."
Biden
also accused President Trump of being "racist" and
"xenophobic" when he banned travel to and from China in January when
we first learned of the coronavirus. The former VP would backtrack on those
remarks and eventually come to find that Trump was right. It was one of Biden's
signature flip flops.
"In
what universe is Joe Biden going to be able to do stand up with strength, with
fortitude, and combat China?" Cruz wondered.
Hong Kong Police Fire Tear Gas, Water Cannon at ProtestersOusted Hollywood exec is charged with looting $1.7M from coronavirus small business loan program and diverting $25M from BlackRock hedge fund to pay for his Beverly Hills mansion and Tesla
- William Sadleir, 66, was arrested by federal agents on Friday in Los Angeles
- He was ousted as CEO of small movie studio Aviron Pictures last fall
- Feds say he pilfered $1.7 million in PPP loans with phony applications
- Sadleir allegedly used the money to pay off credit cards and car loan
- He is also accused of using BlackRock investment to buy Beverly Hills mansion
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
William Sadleir, 66, was arrested on Friday in Los Angeles on federal charges
U.S. prosecutors have charged the recently ousted owner of a Hollywood movie distributor with defrauding a federal coronavirus emergency relief program and a BlackRock investment fund, including to pay for a Beverly Hills mansion and other luxuries.
William Sadleir, 66, was arrested on Friday in Los Angeles after federal prosecutors said he diverted much of the $1.7 million of loans he received on May 1 from the Paycheck Protection Program for personal expenses.
Prosecutors say he filed a phony loan application with JPMorgan Chase & Co and the Small Business Administration saying the emergency funds were needed for his former company Aviron Group, which had terminated him in December and where he has no current role.
Aviron's films have included Halle Berry's Kidnap, Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway's Serenity, and A Private War starring Rosamund Pike.
The PPP was meant 'to help small businesses stay afloat during the financial crisis, and we will act swiftly against those who abuse the program for their own personal gain,' U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna in Los Angeles said in a statement.
Sadleir was ousted late last year as CEO of Aviron Pictures, whose credits include Halle Berry's Kidnap and Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway's Serenity
Prosecutors say that Sadleir used the PPP funds to pay off his and his wife's American Express cards and make a $40,000 payment on a car loan.
Sadleir was also accused of having previously induced the closed-end BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust Fund to invest $75 million in Aviron to support its films.
Prosecutors said he then created a sham company to divert at least $25 million of the money, and assumed the fake identity 'Amanda Stevens' to communicate by email with the BlackRock fund about its investment.
In a related civil case, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Sadleir's 'lavish lifestyle' also included a $127,000 Tesla.
In February, the BlackRock executive who approved the $75 million investment in Aviron was fired for conflict of interest after it emerged that the studio had cast his aspiring actress daughter in a movie.
BlackRock exec Randy Robertson (standing left with Sadleir) was fired after approving at $75 million loan to Aviron Studios, which later cast his daughter Rebecca Lee Robertson (right)
Randy Robertson was let go by BlackRock in light of the claims, leaving the fund scrambling to take 'vigorous steps to recover value for shareholders' and 'enhance the level of oversight and due diligence related to these type of transactions'.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Robertson loaned the $75 million sum to Aviron Pictures in 2017. Two years later, the film studio released the romantic drama, After, starring the fund manager's actress daughter, Rebecca Lee Robertson.
At the time of the loan, BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust had $750 million in assets, so it appeared 'an unusually aggressive bet' to funnel 10 percent of that sum into Aviron, a 'small, privately held movie company'.
Sadleir told the Journal that Robertson agreed to release $10 million in financing for the romantic drama, After, when he learned that Aviron had finally cast his daughter in a film.
'I can't tell you that he made the decision purely because his daughter was in the movie, but I can tell you BlackRock approved that financing after turning down the opportunity to finance several earlier movies,' Sadleir said.
After, released last year, has a 17 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was panned by Variety as 'an innocuous teen pulp soap opera'.
Sadleir is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and a deputy secretary of state who later moved into the indie movie business.
A lawyer for Sadleir could not immediately be identified. A BlackRock spokesman declined to comment.
The BlackRock fund had $574 million of assets as of May 21, and normally invests most assets in debt and loans. It sued Sadleir for fraud in a New York state court in December.
Sadleir is charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, making false statements to a financial institution, and making false statements to the Small Business Administration.
Sadleir faces up to 82 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
Anyone with information about fraud related to COVID-19 can report it by calling the Justice Department’s Disaster Fraud Hotline at 866-720-5721.
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