Joe Biden needs to answer these
questions and others now without equivocation concerning the Chinese-related
business dealings of Hunter Biden’s firm while Joe Biden was vice president.
Otherwise, voters will be entitled to assume the worst about what is likely to
lie ahead for U.S.-China relations if Hunter's father Joe Biden is elected
president.
Joe Biden has offshored US jobs, and his family's racketeering,
to China
By Chris Talgo
During Joe Biden's nearly half-century
in politics, he has been an outspoken advocate for globalism.
Furthermore, over the past few decades, he has become especially fond of
championing the rise of America's primary foe, communist China.
Why does this matter? Because
Joe Biden is running for the presidency of the United States, and his cozy
relationship with communist China should be called into question.
In 2001, when the Chinese Communist
Party was lobbying to join the World Trade Organization, then-senator Joe
Biden (D-Del.) was an ardent supporter. While in Taiwan that year,
pushing for engagement with China, Biden
said , "The more they [China] have to lose, the more they are
likely to begin to accommodate international norms." How wrong he
was.
Biden also encouraged extending Most
Favored Nation status to China permanently, which was also granted in 2001.
When
asked this past month by Jake Tapper , "Do
you think, in retrospect, you were naïve about China?," Biden responded,
"No, here is the thing ... we want China to grow."
Wait, what? Joe Biden wants China
to grow. Joe Biden wants China to become more powerful. Joe Biden
wants China to usurp more American jobs. Yes, he does.
Since China joined the WTO almost 20
years ago, the American manufacturing sector has paid a steep price.
According to a recent report by
the Economic
Policy Institute , "[t]he U.S. has lost
3.7 million jobs since 2001 due to its trade imbalance with China, with most of
the damage done to manufacturing."
Despite the economic carnage throughout
America's Rust Belt that China's entry into the WTO propelled, Joe Biden still
thinks it was a good idea.
As if his support for China's entry into
the WTO was not bad enough, Biden took his enthusiasm for China to a whole new
level when he became vice president.
As vice president, Joe Biden was a key
player in Obama's "Pivot to Asia" strategy. Biden pushed
Obama's Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, which would have been the
nail in the coffin for America's industrial base. Fortunately,
Obama-Biden's TPP was not ratified by the U.S. Senate.
Yet this did not deter Biden from
crafting his own deal, between his son Hunter and the Chinese Communist Party.
As journalist Peter
Schweizer has documented in great detail,
"[t]his isn't just another story about a politician's kid getting rich[.]
... Hunter's new firm started making investment deals that would serve the
strategic interests of the Chinese military."
Interestingly, as Schweizer points out,
"[h]e [Biden] became much more soft on Beijing when his son started
getting very lucrative, exclusive deals courtesy of the Chinese
government."
To this day, Hunter Biden is still in
business with the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2019, during the early days of his
run for the Democratic presidential nomination, Biden did a wonderful job of
reminding Americans how off-base he is when it comes to communist China.
While campaigning in Iowa, Biden
said , "China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man.
I mean, you know, they're not bad folks, folks. But guess what:
they're not competition for us."
As if. Sorry Joe — China is
America's chief competitor. You would think a man who has spent the past
47 years in the nation's capital would know that.
And last but not least, the topic of the
coronavirus.
When U.S. officials learned of the
outbreak in Wuhan, President Trump issued a travel ban from China. How
did Joe Biden respond to this? He
tweeted , "We are in the midst of a crisis
with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald
Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the
worst possible person to lead our country through a global health
emergency."
In other words, Biden opposed the
Chinese travel ban, which no doubt saved untold American lives, because he was
either too concerned with political correctness or perhaps he was reluctant to
cause trouble with his son's money men.
Either way, no matter the reason, Joe
Biden's instincts concerning China regarding coronavirus, trade policies, and
his son's shady business deals have been troublesome, at best.
When it comes to managing U.S.-China
relations, one cannot think of a worse candidate for the difficult job, based
on his track record and his family's double-dealings, than Joe Biden.
Chris
Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org ) is an editor at The Heartland
Institute.
Senate
Report: Biden Family Bought $100K of ‘Extravagant Items’ with China-Linked
Credit Cards
AP Photo/Nick Wass
Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s family members
bought more than $100,000 worth of “extravagant items” in 2017 using a line of
credit linked to associates of the Chinese communist government.
A bombshell report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee and Senate Finance Committee details numerous cases in which
Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and family members have deep ties to the Chinese
communist government, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.
In one instance, the Senate report states that on September 8,
2017, Hunter Biden and Chinese national Gongwen Dong — with ties to the
Chinese communist government — opened a bank account to fund a more than
$100,000 “global spending spree” for members of the Biden family.
“Hunter Biden and Gongwen Dong, a Chinese national who has
reportedly executed transactions for limited liability companies controlled by
Ye Jianming, applied to a bank and opened a line of credit under the business
name Hudson West III LLC (Hudson West III),” the Senate report states. The
report continues:
Hunter Biden, James Biden, and James Biden’s wife, Sara Biden,
were all authorized users of credit cards associated with the account. The Bidens subsequently used the credit cards they
opened to purchase $101,291.46 worth of extravagant items, including airline
tickets and multiple items at Apple Inc. stores, pharmacies, hotels, and restaurants .
The cards were collateralized by transferring $99,000 from a Hudson West III
account to a separate account, where the funds were held until the cards were
closed. The transaction was identified for potential financial criminal
activity. [Emphasis added]
According to the Senate report, Hunter Biden held one of the
credit cards while James Biden and Sara Biden, Biden’s brother and
sister-in-law, held three cards.
(Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and
Senate Finance Committee)
The Senate report states that Hudson West III LLC was first
incorporated on April 19, 2016, more than a year before the China-linked line
of credit was opened to fund purchases made by Hunter Biden, James Biden, and
Sara Biden.
Hudson West III LLC had a number of business dealings with
companies and Chinese nationals linked to the Chinese communist government, the
Senate report states:
On Aug. 8, 2017, CEFC Infrastructure Investment wired $5 million
to the bank account for Hudson West III . These funds may
have originated from a loan issued from the account of a company called
Northern International Capital Holdings, a Hong Kong-based investment company
identified at one time as a “substantial shareholder” in CEFC International
Limited along with Ye. It is unclear whether Hunter Biden was half-owner of
Hudson West III at that time. However, starting on Aug. 8, the same day the $5
million was received, and continuing through Sept. 25, 2018, Hudson
West III sent frequent payments to Owasco, Hunter Biden’s firm . These
payments, which were described as consulting fees, reached $4,790,375.25 in
just over a year. [Emphasis added]
The Senate report also accuses Hunter Biden
of paying Russian and Eastern European women who are linked to prostitution or
a human trafficking ring. Another detail reveals that one of
Russia’s most powerful oligarchs paid Hunter Biden’s private equity firm $3.5
million in 2014.
John Binder is a
reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
A Biden Ally and J Street
Vice Chair’s Company Offers Access to Senior Chinese Officials
And what it says about the
Democrat Party.
Wed Sep 16, 2020
Daniel Greenfield
8
Daniel Greenfield,
a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an
investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic
terrorism.
“Meet and build relationships
with China’s senior governmental and private sector leaders in your chosen area
of business,” the invitation on the site of Empire Global Ventures read. “Join
us for elite curated experiences with the people who decide the future of
China’s tech sector, craft and enforce its regulations, dominate its industries
and chart its path forward.”
The only thing more intriguing
than the invitation may be Empire Global Ventures whose CEO is also the Vice
Chair of the board of J Street and a prominent Democrat donor and fundraiser.
When Governor Andrew Cuomo
split up with his celebrity girlfriend after over a decade of shacking up
together, media accounts made sure to mention the role of Alexandra Stanto in
introducing the formerly happy couple.
As the CEO of Empire Global
Ventures, Stanton has come a long way since then. But the name of her company
closely echoes Empire State Development, an arm of the New York State
government, where Stanton had served as chief of staff from 2006 through 2008.
Stanton had worked for David
Patterson, back when he was in the State Senate. Then Eliot Spitzer, New York's
megalomaniacal Attorney General picked Patterson, the black and partly blind
Senate Majority Leader, as his running mate, to score with voters.
Patterson was never expected to
actually take the governor's office, but then Spitzer imploded, after
allegations of prostitution and thuggish behavior, and was forced to step down.
Stanton, who had been
Patterson’s deputy campaign manager for policy, and Sam Natapoff, her husband,
had scored six figure gigs with Empire State Development, with Sam earning the
grand title of, “Senior Advisor to the Governor of New York State for
International Commerce.” Today, Sam is the president of Empire Global Ventures
and writes editorials attacking President Trump over his work to help Americans
resist China’s abusive trade policies.
Stanton and her husband had
been pumping sizable amounts of money
into Paterson and Cuomo's war chests. Stanton alone had donated $10,000 to both
Paterson and Cuomo. But Stanton’s fundraising soon went national with an Obama
fundraiser running as much as $20,000 a ticket. And Obama named Stanton a general
trustee of the Kennedy Center.
The money has kept on rolling
out with Stanton donating thousands to Mayor Bill de Blasio and scoring an $8,000 per month consulting job
for City Hall.
By then, Stanton had become the
vice chair of J Street: a key anti-Israel lobby group.
Alexandra Stanton has spent the
last 12 years serving as Vice Chair of the anti-Israel group originally funded
by George Soros and has, in media accounts, been dubbed a “Jewish leader.”
Alexandra is the granddaughter
of Hellenic Lines shipping tycoon Pericles Callimanopulos. The Greek tycoon’s
funeral service was held at the Greek Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in
Manhattan.
Pericles' daughter and
Alexandra's mother, Domna Stanton, a feminist academic who is a longtime board
member of Human Rights Watch and had a prominent role at Planned Parenthood,
was named by De Blasio as one of New York City’s human rights commissioners.
Domna and her husband Frank, a
successful entrepreneur who had made his mark helping his brother Arthur import
the Volkswagen Beetle to America and trying to launch an early VCR, showed up
in Tom Wolfe's famously mocking profile of Leonard Bernstein's Black Panther
party.
The Stanton family has
connections by marriage to socialites from New York to D.C. and Domna’s
Hamptons garden parties are required attendance for celebrities and the smart
set.
Alexandra Stanton has kept up
the tradition with cocktail parties attended by none
other than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She
was on the host committee for Hillary Clinton’s million dollar fundraiser for
Bill de Blasio, and, more recently, she took part in a Joe Biden fundraiser.
When Pelosi spoke at the
anti-Israel J Street’s gala, she thanked Stanton by name.
And when Obama descended into
ugly antisemitic attacks against Jewish opponents of the Iran Deal, Alexandra
Stanton was there to claim that he “has a right to combat what he thinks are
campaigns against him laden with non-facts and offensive statements.”
But Alexandra has a lot of
irons in the fire besides campaigning against the Jewish State.
These days, Stanton has also been
marketing Little Lives PPE face shields for children, scoring a FOX profile,
who described the politically connected Democrat, as a "mom".
The Wall Street
Journal mentioned Stanton's face shields for children in its
article on reopening schools alongside a quote from Randi Weingarten, the head
of the American Federation of Teachers.
The American Federation of
Teachers, the country's largest network of Democrat teachers' unions, had its
PPE purchases facilitated by Stanton and Empire Global Ventures.
Randi Weingarten, the AFT's
head, who recently faced criticism for claiming
that it's not safe for teachers to go back to school even while attending Al
Sharpton's 50,000 strong rally in D.C., was described as knowing "people
at Empire Global Ventures, a business development firm with experience in
China, where much of the world’s PPE is manufactured."
This wasn't the only strange
intersection between Empire, Democrats, and the coronavirus.
The sister-in-law of Chris
Cuomo, a CNN anchor and Governor Cuomo's brother, works for Empire Global
Ventures, and has been touting hypochlorous acid from Y2X Life Sciences as an
answer to the coronavirus. Cuomo's sister-in-law claimed that spraying
hypochlorous acid could keep businesses safe from the virus. Alexandra Stanton
and her husband are listed as Y2X Life Sciences advisers, along with Matt
Kennedy, RFK’s grandson and Joe Kennedy III’s brother, who sits on the boards
of Kennedy institutions, and had held down various positions in the Obama
administration, along with Dick Gephardt, the former Democrat House Majority
Leader.
In July, a job posting for
Empire Global Ventures described it as a medical products company.
What does Empire Global
Ventures actually do and whom does it know in China?
An invitation on the company's
site offers the opportunity to meet with "China’s senior governmental and
private sector leaders" and "China’s key decision makers".
Who are these senior government
officials and how does Empire have access to them?
These are all questions that
the media might be asking considering Alexandra Stanton’s long history of
access to top Democrat officials, including Obama and Biden, the large checks,
and Stanton’s key role at J Street, a domestic group whose funding came from
George Soros and, allegedly, Bill Benter , a
gambler operating out of Hong
Kong. They choose not to ask them.
Alexandra Stanton’s career
shows why people join the Democrats, not because they want a fairer world, but
because family and political connections pave the path to success, not for the
poor, but for wealthy families that are already exceedingly well connected in
that world.
The granddaughter of a Greek
shipping tycoon became a Democrat operative and fundraiser (and Jewish leader),
and while her company claims close access to the officials of a foreign
government, she has a powerful position in a foreign policy lobby giving her
access to Biden.
Considering Biden’s own
longstanding and problematic connections to China, and the role that the
Communist dictatorship is allegedly playing in boosting his campaign, this is
troubling.
It’s a good thing that the
media isn’t interested in asking any tough questions.
IMAGE
China Wins if Biden Wins
Biden’s disturbing record
of pro-China bias.
Mon Sep 14, 2020
Joseph Klein
23
China will have a great friend
in the White House if Joe Biden wins the presidency. At the same time, Joe
Biden’s son Hunter will acquire more friends in Beijing anxious to do business
with a member of the U.S. president’s immediate family in order to gain access
to the Oval Office.
Joe Biden has a long record evidencing
his pro-China bias. Thus, it was not a surprise when Biden said last year about
China: “They’re not bad folks, folks … They’re not competition for us."
After Biden received backlash for this remark, Biden’s handlers tried to turn
him into a hawk on China. But Biden cannot escape his enabling of China’s rise
in power while he was in public office, helping China to become the U.S.’s
number one national security threat.
As Barack Obama’s vice
president and point man on China, Biden cozied up to China’s Communist Party
leaders. At the opening of the third session of the U.S.-China Strategic &
Economic Dialogue in May 2011, Biden said that “a rising China is a positive,
positive development, not only for China but for America and the world writ large.”
Biden characterized the relationship with China sought by the Obama-Biden
administration as “a cooperative partnership.”
In August 2011 at a U.S.-China
business round table held in Beijing, Biden declared that “President
Obama and I, we welcome, encourage and see nothing but positive benefits
flowing from direct investment in the United States from Chinese businesses and
Chinese entities.”
Following meetings between
Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping (then-Vice President) in 2011 and 2012,
the Obama-Biden administration agreed to allow Chinese companies
access to U.S. capital markets without
having to go through the same rigorous inspection of their books by U.S.
regulators that is required for U.S. companies. Biden’s idea of a “cooperative
partnership” was to help boost the economic power of a “rising China” to
further heights by handing Chinese companies an opportunity to cheat on a
silver platter.
A “rising China” is a positive
development only for China. A “rising China” is a very negative development for
the United States. China's rapid economic growth, aided by Biden, has enabled
the Chinese Communist regime to build up its military and cyber technology to
the point that it has become the greatest single threat to our national
security.
China did not become our chief
adversary on the global stage overnight. China’s economy took off only after it
joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. And Joe Biden was in China’s
corner every step of the way, beginning with his strong advocacy for China’s
membership in the WTO while he was in the Senate.
In July 2000, during a Senate
Foreign Relations Committee hearing on giving permanent normal trade relations
status to Communist China, then-Senator Biden asserted as a foregone conclusion
that “granting permanent normal trade relations to China has little to do with
our national security. It does not increase their access to controlled U.S.
technology. It does not increase their access to our markets.” Biden then
claimed that bringing the Chinese regime into contact with the international
norms of the WTO “is the best way to get China to clean up its act.”
Biden was wrong as usual. The
Chinese Communist dictatorship did not clean up its act. It did the opposite.
As former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI Kevin R. Brock
observed in an article he wrote for The Hill, “China largely has cheated its
way to prosperity.” Stealing valuable intellectual property and using deceptive
tactics to gain an unfair economic advantage are second nature to the regime
and its state-owned companies. The regime's atrocious human rights abuses have
gotten much worse.
According to the Economic Policy Institute , “the growing U.S. trade deficit with China has eliminated 3.4
million U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2017, including 1.3 million jobs lost since
2008 (the first full year of the Great Recession).” This all took place since
China became a member of the World Trade Organization, right under Biden’s nose
and with his help while he was a senator, vice president, and Obama’s point man
on China.
The most benign explanation for
Biden’s pro-China bias is that he is a fool, who is oblivious to China’s
growing threat to the U.S.'s position as the world’s preeminent global economic
and military superpower.
There is also a more sinister
explanation for Biden’s willingness to give China the benefit of the doubt. Joe
Biden’s son Hunter reportedly cashed in while his father was the point person
on Obama-Biden administration policy towards China.
Peter Schweitzer, a prominent
author on government corruption who put together a documentary entitled “Riding
the Dragon: Uncovering the Bidens’ Chinese Secrets,” has exposed Hunter Biden’s
involvement in questionable deals with Chinese government affiliated entities
while his father was vice president. Schweitzer charged that “the Bidens were prepared and willing to make money,
even if it damaged our military posture vis-a-vis the Chinese who are our chief
rivals on the global stage.”
Hunter Biden was involved with
a Chinese-dominated investment firm called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) through a
U.S. company named Rosemont Seneca Partners that Hunter had formed in 2009 with
Chris Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, and others.
BHR was formed in late 2013 by a merger between the Chinese-government linked
firm, Bohai Capital, and Rosemont Seneca Partners.
Around the time of the merger
creating BHR, Hunter Biden flew aboard Air Force Two with his father to China.
While in China, Hunter helped arrange for Jonathan Li, CEO of Bohai Capital, to
“shake hands” with then-Vice President Joe Biden. Hunter Biden met with Li for
reportedly a “social meeting.” The coincident timing of Hunter Biden's sojourn
to China with his father, the forming of BHR by Bohai Capital and Rosemont, and
the father and son face times with Bohai Capital's CEO is suspicious, to say
the least. Moreover, the business license of BHR was approved by China shortly
after the Biden trip's conclusion. Through its equity participation in BHR’s
business, Hunter's firm stood to make a tidy profit.
Last year, Senate Finance
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin focusing on the questionable acquisition of a U.S. automotive
technology company, Henniges, by a Chinese aviation company and BHR.
Henniges’ technology reportedly has military applications. Grassley expressed
concerns over the process by which the Obama-Biden administration’s Committee
on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approved this acquisition.
According to Grassley’s
account, “In September 2015, BHR joined with a subsidiary of the Aviation
Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to acquire Henniges for $600 million.
Because the acquisition gave Chinese companies direct control of Henniges’
anti-vibration technologies, the transaction was reviewed by CFIUS. CFIUS
approved the transaction despite reports that in 2007, years before BHR teamed
up with AVIC’s subsidiary, AVIC was reportedly involved in stealing sensitive
data regarding the Joint Strike Fighter program. AVIC later reportedly
incorporated the stolen data into China’s J-20 and J?31 aircraft.”
Aviation Industry Corporation
of China is identified by the Pentagon as one of the Chinese companies “owned
by, controlled by, or affiliated with China's government, military, or defense
industry." The Obama-Biden administration's approval of the joint
acquisition of a U.S. company with military-related technology by an AVIC
subsidiary and its partner BHR is highly troubling. Obama’s VP and China point
man Joe Biden needs to answer some key questions now as voters consider his
candidacy for the U.S. presidency.
For example, what interactions
did CFIUS members or their staffs have with Obama, Biden or their staffs on the
Henniges transaction? What did Joe Biden know about the joint acquisition of
Henniges by BHR (in which his son's firm had an equity interest) and a
subsidiary of the Chinese government affiliated AVIC? Did Biden or his staff
exert any pressure on CFIUS to approve the Henniges acquisition despite its
obvious national security implications? Was the Henniges transaction subject to
a national security arrangement? If not, why not?
Joe Biden needs to answer these
questions and others now without equivocation concerning the Chinese-related
business dealings of Hunter Biden’s firm while Joe Biden was vice president.
Otherwise, voters will be entitled to assume the worst about what is likely to
lie ahead for U.S.-China relations if Hunter's father Joe Biden is elected
president.
No comments:
Post a Comment