McAuliffe Fundraises With Real Estate Exec Who Pushed Controversial Visa Program To Attract Chinese Investment
VA Dem gov nominee faced federal investigation for 'visa-for-sale scheme'
A top fundraiser for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe solicited Chinese investment in the Washington, D.C., area by floating the prospect of permanent U.S. residency—a move McAuliffe himself exploited to secure lucrative funding from China.
McAuliffe took $15,000 from luxury real estate executive Mark Lowham as part of a private fundraiser held at Lowham's mansion in May. In 2017, Lowham co-authored a book titled Chinese Institutions' Definitive Guide to USA Real Estate, which "aimed to guide Chinese buyers through real estate investing in Washington, D.C."
According to the book, the nation's capital is "one of China's most desirable U.S. markets for real estate investment." Lowham specifically touted the city's ties to American national security institutions, including the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency. He also touted Chinese investors' ability to secure U.S. residency through the EB-5 program, which awards visas to foreign-funded ventures that claim to generate jobs for Americans.
McAuliffe has his own history with the controversial program. During his 2013 run for governor, the Democrat's electric car company faced a federal investigation centered around a "visa-for-sale scheme." McAuliffe partnered with a financial firm run by Hillary Clinton's brother, Anthony Rodham, to attract foreign investment in the company in return for U.S. residency.
McAuliffe and Rodham contacted the Obama administration to expedite the company's EB-5 visa applications after they were held for "fraud" and "national security" concerns, documents released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) show. In one 2010 email to a Department of Homeland Security staffer, McAuliffe wrote that he was "extremely frustrated" with the approval process and referenced Virginia Democratic senator Mark Warner in an attempt to grease the wheels.
"You should be aware that Senator Warner and other members of Congress have made inquiries on this project," McAuliffe said.
Invitation to the McAuliffe fundraiser hosted at the Lowham mansion.
McAuliffe partnered with Chinese businessman Charles Wang to launch the business venture, electric car company GreenTech Automotive. Wang owned GreenTech through Capital Wealth Holdings, his investment company based in the British Virgin Islands tax haven.
McAuliffe quietly resigned as chairman of GreenTech in 2012 after opting to move the company's operations to Mississippi instead of Virginia, where he said the business would create 1,500 jobs. The Democrat's shady Chinese business deals, however, go beyond GreenTech.
The Department of Justice targeted McAuliffe in 2016 over a $120,000 contribution he received from Chinese billionaire Wang Wenliang, who also pledged to give $2 million to the Clinton Foundation at the time of the donation.
Roughly a decade earlier, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign—which McAuliffe chaired—faced criticism after raising $380,000 at a lucrative dinner event in New York City's Chinatown. Most of the attendees at the $1,000-a-plate fundraiser, the Los Angeles Times reported, were not registered voters and listed "dishwasher" and other low-paying jobs on campaign filings. Many donors later said they contributed due to pressure from powerful Chinese families associated with organized crime.
McAuliffe also masterminded a fundraising strategy for former president Bill Clinton that brought the head of a Chinese military-owned weapons company to the White House in 1996.
As governor, meanwhile, McAuliffe funneled $1.4 million from his "Governor's Opportunity Fund" to Lindenburg Industries, a Chinese-owned company that pledged to create 349 jobs in Virginia through an automotive parts factory. McAuliffe's administration did not ask for the company's financial statements until after it provided the money.
Just a year after inking the deal, Lindenburg let its factory enter foreclosure. The company did not hire a single person and missed a deadline to repay the grant in 2016. North Carolina declined to do business with Lindenburg three years earlier after conducting a background check into the company.
McAuliffe did not return a request for comment. Lowham told the Washington Free Beacon that he has "never spoken with Terry about business-related issues."
"Washington real estate is a tremendous value compared to other global capitals, and we continue to see interest from all corners of the globe, including Asia, in our market," Lowham added. "That noted, we have not seen Chinese investors seeking EB-5 visas in our market."
McAuliffe will square off against GOP challenger Glenn Youngkin in November. The Democrat entered June with a sizable cash disadvantage, holding $3.3 million on hand to Youngkin's $4.4 million.
DO A SEARCH FOR CHINA'S OLD WHORE, AND HER CHINESE PAYMASTERS!
Democrat Traitors Stand by China’s Spy Consulates
Democrat sanctuary cities don’t just provide sanctuary for illegal aliens, but for enemy spies.
The Chinese Communist Party at 100
An anniversary to mourn.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1, 1921. Hold the confetti and balloons, please.
That’s 100 years and an ocean of blood.
It’s been a century of carnage: The Chinese Civil War (2.2 million dead), the Great Leap Forward (15 million to 55 million dead), the Cultural Revolution (upwards of 20 million dead), the conquest of Tibet, Tiananmen Square, the One-Child Policy (including forced abortions and sterilizations), the subjugation of Hong Kong, the Uyghurs in concentration camps (more than 1 million imprisoned since 2017), the leaky lab in Wuhan (worldwide death toll, 3.94 million and climbing).
Regarding the Peoples Barbed Wire Enclosure of China, a few things to consider:
- The cabal in Beijing does not constitute a legitimate government. It’s a criminal gang that rules the nation by force.
- The Chi Coms are inveterate liars. They promised Hong Kong semi -autonomy for 50 years. (“One country, two systems.”) The ink was hardly dry on the accords transferring sovereignty from Britain to China, before the Red Chinese began violating it.
- How can the commies get away with calling their regime the People’s Republic of China, when the people have less to do with its governance than I do with running General Motors? Easy. The Party is the Vanguard of the Proletariat. The Party is omniscient. The Party knows what’s best for the people even when they don’t know themselves, because they’re too weak or stupid to understand where their interests lie. Hence, the Party has a right and a duty to speak in the people’s name.
- The Thousand Year Reich lasted for a dozen years. Officially, the Soviet Union existed for 69 years. The People’s Republic of China has been in the tyranny business for 72 years and is still going strong.
- That Beijing was able to graft free-market elements to a totalitarian system has resulted in a diabolically dangerous mutation.
- In their relationship with the PRC, US corporations are accomplices to genocide.
- Looking for Biden and company to rein-in China is like expecting Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail to take on the Golden Horde.
- In May, Whispering Joe said China “believes it will own us in 15 years.” At about the same time, he said Putin was “a killer.” Now, the Russian oligarch is a “worthy adversary.”) Biden’s take on Xi will probably evolve to “honorable competitor.”
- The Chi-coms see America with a vulture’s eye. They see the U.S. rife with dissension and division. They see a president who’s barely vertical and rarely coherent. Internationally, they see a nation retreating on every front. They see a government that isn’t even able to maintain order in its largest cities. They see a nation where racial paranoia is inculcated in schools and self-hatred is taught in the military. They view us the way the schoolyard bully looks at the skinny kid with glasses and a pocket-full of lunch money.
- If there is another World War, the insane territorial ambitions of Communist China (including the annexation of Taiwan), will be the catalyst.
In the 1950s, Khrushchev said he’d bury us. Xi has the grave site picked out.
Senator Dianne Feinstein
· Website
· SF Office
(415) 393-0707
· DC Office
(202) 224-3841
· Los Angeles Office
(310) 914-7300
· U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 25, 2018. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
· US NEWS
· Feinstein’s Close China Ties Under Scrutiny After Chinese Spy Discovery
· BY ZACHARY STIEBER
·
· News of a Chinese spy working for U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein broke recently, revealing the spy was employed by Feinstein for 20 years.
· Initially reported as part of a larger story about spies in Silicon Valley, a former intelligence official later revealed that the staffer was Feinstein’s driver for many years.
· The source told the San Francisco Chronicle that the driver passed information to Chinese officials based at the local Chinese Consulate. Part of the staffer’s role was acting as a liaison between Feinstein’s San Francisco office and the local consulate.
· The staffer was recruited to spy after visiting China.
· The staffer, who has not been named, worked for Feinstein for 20 years.
·
Senator Feinstein was alerted to the spy about five years ago. The FBI alerted Feinstein after investigating and finding the staffer shared nothing of substance.
· “They interviewed him, and Dianne forced him to retire, and that was the end of it,” the source said. “None of her staff ever knew what was going on. They just kept it quiet.”
· Feinstein wouldn’t comment on the spy but her office told CBS that none of the staffers in San Francisco have ever had security clearances.
· Noting the oddness of the discovery, President Donald Trump said via Twitter on August 3: “Dianne is the person leading our Nation on ‘Collusion’ with Russia (only done by Dems). Will she now investigate herself?”
· …Dianne is the person leading our Nation on “Collusion” with Russia (only done by Dems). Will she now investigate herself? https://t.co/OG6l04bBwg
· — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2018
· Feinstein’s Relationship With China
· Some details of Feinstein’s past are now being examined anew, centered on her close relationship with China, beginning with her service as mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988.
· Feinstein has long been linked to China. For instance, she hosted former president of China Jiang Zemin at her home for dinner when she was mayor of San Francisco, and celebrated the resumption of air service from China to the United States (starting with San Francisco International Airport) after a 32-year hiatus.
· San Francisco and Shanghai have been sister cities for 38 years, after the agreement was put into place by Feinstein and Jiang, who was then Shanghai’s mayor. Feinstein was cited as having a “close relationship” with Jiang and ties between the two continued for many years later.
· Jiang is infamous for cracking down on human rights, most notoriously by banning the peaceful meditation practice of Falun Gong and throwing many of its estimated 100 million adherents into jail.
· 
A re-enactment of organ harvesting in China on Falun Gong practitioners, during a rally in Ottawa, Canada, 2008. (The Epoch Times)
· Under Jiang, torture, rape, murder, and even organ harvesting from detained practitioners became common.
· To help facilitate the relationship between the U.S. and China, Feinstein asked organizers of the city’s popular Chinese New Year Parade to stop displaying the flag of the Nationalist Chinese government, which ruled in exile in Taiwan after 1949.
· Feinstein also defended China, despite its communist policies, insisting that it was merely “socialist.”
· “There was originally this kind of anti-communist view of China,” Feinstein told the Washington Post. “That’s changing. . . . China is a socialist country but one that is increasingly becoming capitalistic.”
· Husband Becomes Prominent Investor in China
· Several articles from the 90s explore the development of not only Feinstein’s developing relationship with China while she was mayor, but her husband’s burgeoning investments there.
· According to the Los Angeles Times, in 1997 Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum, who invests his own and clients’ money into undervalued firms, expanded his business investments into the communist nation to the point that “his firm is now a prominent investor” there.
· In 1992, the investments amounted to one project worth less than $500,000. Two years later he was planning to invest up to $150 million and two years after that a Blum investment firm paid $23 million for a stake in a Chinese government-owned steel company.
· Another investment by Blum’s firm was helped by the International Finance Corp., an arm of the World Bank, which invested $10 million in the leading producers of soybean milk and candy in China.
· Utterly amazing to read this 1997 report on Sen Feinstein’s family’s political and business ties to #China in context of revelations about a Chinese spy working for her as a driver for 20 years, quietly let go seemingly rather than being brought to justice https://t.co/efwT2yZgkg pic.twitter.com/twAI5igZ2I
· — Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) August 4, 2018
· “It seems to be going quite well,” Rashad Kaldan—who in 1994 managed the IFC’s capital markets investments in Asia—told the Times of the project. He added: “There also was some comfort in that Mr. Blum had some contacts with the Chinese.”
· Blum said that his interest in China went back many years, predating political connections. He won permission from the Chinese in 1981 to climb the east face of Mt. Everest and called himself a close friend of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader who the Chinese government opposes.
· In dispatches written for the San Francisco Examiner, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Blum said that a goodwill visit to China by Feinstein in 1979 helped him win permission to climb Everest.
· “We had come to build goodwill, promote trade and to make new friends,” Blum wrote in one story, adding, “but I asked for and received permission to have another kind of meeting—one with the Chinese Mountaineering Association.”
· Trips to China
· Feinstein took three trips between 1995 and 1997 to China, in addition to trips earlier in her mayoral service, to meet with top communist officials, including Jiang. Blum often attended the meetings with her, an arrangement the Times described as “unusual.”
· At one time, the couple had dinner at Zhongnanhai, the enclave reserved for the president and other top officials in China.
· “We had dinner in Zhongnanhai in Mao Tse-tung’s old residence in the room where he died. We were told that we were the first foreigners to see his bedroom and the swimming pool. It was a very historic moment to see some of these things,” told the Los Angeles Times. Mao was the communist leader of China whose policies led to the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese people.
· Feinstein insisted that Blum had never spoken to officials during meetings about business.
· “I am open to any suggestion as to how I can even make a firewall more fireproof,” she said. “I don’t know what else I can do. . . . Either he retires or I suppose we end our marriage.”
· 
Dianne Feinstein, U.S.Senator and Richard Blum arrive at the State Dinner for China’s President President Xi and Madame Peng Liyuan at the White House for an official State Visit in Washington on Sept. 25, 2015. (Photo by Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images)
· Experts noted that even attending the meetings and being so visible conferred a certain benefit to Blum, in addition to Feinstein’s pro-China record.
· “There is no doubt in my mind that, if Dianne Feinstein had a pattern of taking positions on U.S.-China policy that Chinese officials disliked, Mr. Blum would have a great deal more difficulty doing business in China and probably would find it impossible to do,” said Ross Munro, co-author of “The Coming Conflict with China.”
· By 2000, Blum pledged not to invest in China or Hong Kong as long as his wife remained a senator.
· The Los Angeles Times noted that Feinstein has sometimes taken on issues that seemed to coincide with those of her husband, such as calling in a speech on the Senate floor in 1994 for President Bill Clinton to increase favorable trade relations with China. At the same time, Blum was planning to invest up to $150 million there.
· Feinstein was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992.
· China Attempts Illegal Contributions
· A widespread campaign of making potentially illegal donations stemmed from a 1996 vote on whether to bestow permanent most-favored-nation trading status on China, an effort Feinstein led.
· According to Slate and the Washington Post, Feinstein was alerted in the early 90s by the FBI that the Chinese government was working to illegally contribute money to various campaigns, including hers. Though no donations could be definitively linked to the government, Feinstein returned a $12,000 check to businessman and Democratic National Committee Vice-chair John Huang.
· “We have reason to believe that the government of China may try to make contributions to members of Congress through Asian donors,” a statement in the FBI briefing materials to elected officials read.
· A Justice Department task force said Feinstein nor any other member of Congress knowingly received illegal payments from the Chinese government.
· However, authorities said that the Democratic National Committee returned $3 million in campaign contributions because the money came from questionable or improper sources. Officials believed the potentially illegal campaigns were an attempt to influence votes on the trading status.
· Feinstein has received awards and recognition from some groups for promoting U.S.-China ties, accepting the California-Asia Business Council’s New Silk Road award in 2005.
· “The rise of China is one of the most remarkable transformations the world has ever seen,” she told the crowd.
· “For many of us who watch China, there is both a sense of awe at what China has accomplished, as well as a sense that it could all unravel overnight.”
· “Rather than just pinning the blame on China, we need to better understand the costs that lead to outsourcing abroad and take action to remediate them,” she added.
· “I strongly believe that the US-China relationship is and will be America’s most important bilateral relationship. We must not let differences, economic or otherwise, derail the progress that has already been achieved over the past three decades.”
· From NTD.tv
· Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieber
· 
· Ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) attends a Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington on June 16, 2020. (Tom Williams/Pool/Getty Images)
· POLITICS
· Feinstein Praises China, Opposes Bill That Would Let Americans Sue CCP
· Longtime Democrat has ties to the country
· BY ZACHARY STIEBER
·
· July 31, 2020 Updated: July 31, 2020
·
· Print
· ✉
· A longtime senator spoke out against legislation that would let American citizens sue the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), claiming China’s regime is “growing into a respectable nation” and that the bill would open the United States up for to lawsuits.
· Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has close ties with China, made the comments during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that included discussion of a bill introduced by six Republican lawmakers.
· The legislation would provide Americans with the “legal tools necessary to sue the Chinese government in federal court for creating and worsening the COVID-19 pandemic,” Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), one of the sponsors, said in a statement.
· Feinstein, the oldest member of the Senate, told colleagues that Californians “hold China as a potential trading partner, 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,” she added.
· 
Medical staff in protective clothes are seen carrying a patient from an apartment suspected of having the CCP virus in Wuhan, in Hubei province on Jan. 30, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
· Feinstein cited a professor who told the committee behind closed doors that the United States has the most to lose by permitting civil lawsuits against China.
· “She explained that the more expansive the exceptions, the more they could also apply to U.S. conduct, the worse off we will be,” Feinstein said.
· “In short, if we eliminate sovereign immunity for countries engaging in reckless behavior that contributed to the spread of COVID-19, and other countries, including China, may very well do the same to us,” she added later.
· A Feinstein spokesman didn’t respond to an inquiry about what the senator is doing to respond to the CCP’s human rights abuses, including holding over one million in concentration camps in Xinjiang, or the party’s failure to contain the CCP virus.
· Feinstein during the hearing said she favors forming relationships “that can make the changes internationally.”
· 
Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, isolated from a patient. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. (NIAID)
· The committee later advanced the bill to the full Senate. Republicans hold majorities on each committee because the party holds the Senate with a 53-47 majority, including two Independents who nearly always caucus with Democrats.
· “China’s Communist Party must face consequences for concealing and now profiting off of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a member of the committee, said in a statement.
· Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee conclude
Democrat Traitors Stand by China’s Spy Consulates
Democrat sanctuary cities don’t just provide sanctuary for illegal aliens, but for enemy spies.
July 29, 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.
On Tuesday, Houston firefighters arrived at 3417 Montrose Boulevard. Neighbors had reported smoke and a burning smell at the Chinese consulate. The consulate, which had been given 72 hours to close by the State Department, did not let them in even as the smoke continued to waft into the summer air.
Video showed consulate employees throwing paper into burning bins.
“We have directed the closure of PRC Consulate General Houston, in order to protect American intellectual property and American’s private information," the State Department had warned.
The Houston consulate had become notorious for trying to intimidate American elected officials in Texas and nearby states, as well as American energy companies, especially those doing business in Asia. Some have also linked the Houston consulate to Chinese espionage against American tech and medical firms.
FBI investigations into the Houston consulate involved theft of medical research, recruiting researchers to get at scientific secrets, and forcing Chinese nationals to return to the People’s Republic of China.
Why would the People’s Republic of China have thought that Houston would be a safe base for spying on and intimidating Americans? Houston and Texas Democrats quickly rushed to provide the answer.
Rep. Al Green, who had hosted a luncheon at the spy consulate, accused President Trump of racism.
“Don’t give the impression, please Mr. President, that they are all spies,” Green whined. “My appeal is to the president to understand that his words take on a meaning that can be harmful to other people.”
Rep. Green then went on to suggest that Trump had endangered his constituents by referring to the pandemic as the 'China virus', and suggested that Trump's actions might be leading to "more anti-Asian American violence, or worse, internment.”
While shamelessly playing the race card, for a race he doesn’t belong to, the Democrat did not discuss his own collaboration with the spy consulate.
Rep. Green had co-hosted a Houston press conference with Consul General Cai Wei of the spy consulate, whom he described as a friend, with Chinese state media in attendance, at which the Democrat urged local residents not to worry about the virus, and described himself and Wei as a “committee of two”.
The Houston Democrat boasted that the enemy consulate was close enough for him to walk to.
That's the same Wei who had been accused of using fake identification to get Chinese nationals through the airport, with whom Rep. Green, an American official, had been meeting with on a regular basis.
Texas state representative Gene Wu, who had also been at the press conference, warned that, "in retaliation, China may basically stop all the investments and tell companies to pull out of here."
Green and Wu were far from the only Democrats playing defense for the Communist dictatorship.
Amid reports that a fugitive spy wanted by the FBI is being harbored by the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, the inescapable reality is that foreign spy compounds operate in Democrat sanctuary cities.
Democrat sanctuary cities don’t just provide sanctuary for illegal aliens, but for enemy spies.
The Trump administration had already ordered the shutdown of the Russian consulate in San Francisco over its espionage. And the Chinese consulate appears as if it will be next. But if the Chinese consulate in Houston was able to garner the support of Democrats at the local and national level, the situation in San Francisco is expected to be much worse because of Chi-Com infiltration of California Democrats.
Chinese intelligence officials at the San Francisco consulate had successfully recruited a staffer at Senator Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco office and the situation at the local level is much worse.
And Democrats, instead of supporting their country, are once again undermining it in favor of China.
The same Democrat officials who had castigated President Trump for not trusting the “intelligence community” are the ones rejecting intelligence findings about China’s spy networks.
Senator Angus King suggested that the move was a political stunt by President Trump. "Is it really about confronting China, or does it have something to do with an election in four months?"
Former Senator Max Baucus, Obama's ambassador to the Communist dictatorship, has falsely claimed that the closure was "electioneering".
“This is the wrong way to handle it," Baucus wheedled. "If Pompeo thinks he is going to quote ‘change Chinese behavior,’ he is gravely mistaken.”
Baucus' China rhetoric has, in recent months, tipped into blatant PRC propaganda, when he compared Trump to Hitler for opposing the brutal dictatorship in an interview with a Chinese propaganda outlet. Baucus has a consulting firm that works with Chinese businesses, and sits on the boards of several Chinese companies. The media outlets who have had Baucus on have not disclosed his ties to China.
"There are a lot of very responsible people in America who know this China-bashing is irresponsible and we will pay a price if it continues. That is all I am saying," he had warned.
The Democrat has claimed that relations with China will improve if Biden wins the presidency. That’s not surprising since Biden and Baucus are good friends, and Baucus got the ambassadorship due to Biden.
Biden’s China ties have made it impossible for Democrats to confront the Communist dictatorship. Instead they’ve decided to accuse President Trump of closing the consulate as an election stunt even though it’s only July and the closure it hardly likely to have any meaningful impact on the election.
Instead of standing with America, the Democrats are trying to shift the onus to President Trump.
“The White House must be transparent and show that it is taking smart and thoughtful action, rather than engaging in brash foreign policy," Rep. Lizzie Fletcher complained.
Meanwhile local Democrats like Rep. Al Green, and local Houston media, are treating the consulate closure as a hate crime perpetrated by President Trump in order to persecute Asian-Americans.
Gordon Quan, a former Houston City Councilman, contended that, "to have the consulate close, to have accusations being made that this is the hotspot for spying, just creates a further cast upon the loyalties of Chinese Americans.”
And the Chinese Communist propagandists have adopted the familiar playbook of the Left, complaining about racism, and whining that PRC embassies are facing bomb threats and angry messages. This propaganda is coming from a brutal regime which has engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the ruthless suppression of political dissent, ethnic and religious minorities, and anyone who gets in its way.
Chinese Communist consulates in America, including in Houston, have been used to intimidate Chinese residents in America, and to suppress political protests against China in this country. The Communist regime’s diplomatic corps has organized Chinese students to shout down, threaten, and even physically intimidate political opponents on campuses and even off them in San Francisco.
And yet, Democrats and the media insist on treating the Chinese Communist regime as the victim.
The Democrats are more loyal to their hatred for President Trump than they are to America. And even in the face of blatant enemy action, they choose the People’s Republic of China over the United States. A growing number of Democrats have also been directly or indirectly compromised by the enemy regime.
And that makes President Trump’s crackdown on spy consulates in Democrat cities all the more urgent.
When the State Department closed the spy consulate in Houston, Democrats had to choose between standing with Communist China or standing with America. They chose China and they chose treason.
Photo: China Uncensored (YouTube)
FEINSTEIN HAS SPENT HER ENTIRE POLITICAL LIFE STALKING THE HALLS OF CONGRESS SNIFFING OUT DEALS THAT PUT MULTIPLE FORTUNES IN HER HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM’S POCKETS EVEN AS SHE SOLD OUT AMERICA
The deal would impose no review of human rights and impose no conditions for democratic reforms, supervised multi-party elections and such. All that, and more, is already a done deal with China, like the USSR a one-party Communist dictatorship that never produced a single product the United States needs. This has come about, in large part, due to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Democrat.
LLOYD BILLINGSLEY
https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/americas-china-dependency-syndrome-lloyd-billingsley
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
FEINSTEIN HAS SPENT HER POLITICAL LIFE STALKING THE HALLS OF CONGRESS SNIFFING OUT DEALS THAT PUT HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN HER POCKETS.
SHE HAS AVOIDED PROSECUTION BY VOTING AGAINST ANY ETHICS BILLS AND HER HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM'S HANDING OUT "CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION" BRIBES TO EVERY DEMOCRAT OUT THERE!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/07/she-ranks-as-one-of-most-corrupt-and.html
IN THE November 2006 election, the voters demanded congressional ethics reform. And so, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is now duly in charge of regulating the ethical behavior of her colleagues. But for many years, Feinstein has been beset by her own ethical conflict of interest, say congressional ethics experts.
“All in all, it was an incredible victory for the Chinese government. Feinstein has done more for Red China than other any serving U.S. politician. “ Trevor Loudon
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
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
Senator Who Employed Chinese Spy Endorses Joe Biden for President
A high-profile U.S. senator with professional and personal ties to China — including once employing one of its spies — is backing former Vice President Joe Biden amid mounting questions over his son’s business dealings with the communist regime.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced her endorsement of the former vice president on Tuesday, claiming to have witnessed Biden’s “fortitude” and leadership during their overlapping tenures in Congress.
Feinstein said in a statement:
I’ve worked closely with Vice President Biden and I’ve seen firsthand his legislative ability, his statesmanship, and most importantly his moral fortitude (NO, IT’S NOT A JOKE, BUT THEN FEINSTEIN IS THE MOST SELF-SERVING CORRUPT POL IN U.S. HISTORY). During his time in Congress and in the White House, Joe Biden has been a tireless fighter for hard working (ILLEGALS) MEXICAN families.
BLOG: FEINSTEIN LOVES BIDEN BECAUSE SHE WALLOWS IN CORRUPTION. BIDEN HAD SPENT HIS ENTIRE POLITICAL LIFE SUCKING OFF BRIBES.
“He’s a totally corrupt swamp thing, and here’s the worst part of his manifest corruption – he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s corrupt, if not personally than in terms of allowing his bum kid to leverage his position. He thinks it’s A-OK for his boy Hoover to cash in all over the globe. After all, that’s what you do, right? That’s part of the benefits package for being in the liberal elite. And all these people fussing and fighting about the paternity test-failing dirtbag getting rich are totally out of line. How dare they? HOW DARE THEY!”
He wants to raise taxes, open the borders, let you pay for illegal aliens’ sex changes, and spark a civil war by taking guns from the people who don’t commit crimes.
THE OLD WHORE FEINSTEIN IS NOT ONLY ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT AND SELF-SERVING, SHE HAS BEEN A MAJOR INSTRUMENT IN THE FALL OF AMERICA AS SHE TUCKS THEIR BRIBES DEEP INTO THE BOTTOMLESS POCKETS OF HER PIMP HUSBAND RICHARD BLUM!
America’s China Dependency Syndrome
Lessons from the USSR.
April 28, 2020
Lloyd Billingsley
“Made in China” has been a familiar label on products for years but it wasn’t until March of 2020 that Americans learned of the perils that might entail. China threatened to impose export controls on pharmaceuticals that would plunge America into “the mighty sea of coronavirus.”
Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters the United States was “dangerously reliant” on China for critical goods, including parts for technologies needed to fight COVID-19. Since 2004, Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been supplying 80-90 percent of U.S. antibiotics. Americans might wonder how they landed in such a dependent position, and that invites a comparison with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The world’s first socialist state, established in the world’s largest nation, never produced a single product the West wanted or needed. For all its vast natural resources, the USSR was an economic basket case, and by the mid-1980s in serious trouble.
Suppose that some U.S. senator had then offered a trade deal that ignored the regime’s human rights violations and allowed state-owned Soviet companies to manufacture goods for the American market, all marked “Made In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” These would include vital pharmaceuticals and the deal would allow the use of Soviet steel, and Soviet labor, in major infrastructure projects in the United States.
The deal would impose no review of human rights and impose no conditions for democratic reforms, supervised multi-party elections and such. All that, and more, is already a done deal with China, like the USSR a one-party Communist dictatorship that never produced a single product the United States needs. This has come about, in large part, due to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Democrat.
On a visit to Shanghai in 2006 Feinstein told James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal, “I’ve been coming to China for 31 years, so I’m not a newcomer.” That would put her first visit in 1975, one year before the death of the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong his own self. Feinstein was then a San Francisco supervisor, and as mayor struck up a sister-city relationship with Shanghai. On the 2006 trip Feinstein spent time with former Shanghai mayor Zhu Rongji, “a good friend.”
Areddy asked about the Tiananmen Square massacre then turning 21. Feinstein said it was a “a great setback for China in the view of the world,” a public-relations problem for China, not a human rights issue. “It was just the PLA (People’s Liberation Army)” and China “learned lessons from it.” Still, Feinstein admitted, “we did not discuss it.”
As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Sen. Feinstein’s ties to China are “way deeper” than any Chinese spy in her office. Feinstein maintained a “strictly apologist line” on China’s human rights atrocities, and Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely” during her career in the Senate. Sen. Feinstein “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.” For two decades and three election cycles, Feinstein harbored a Chinese spy who fed “political intelligence” to Beijing’s Communist regime. Since that article, the dossier has grown longer.
As Rosemarie Ho noted in The Nation, Dianne Feinstein failed to support the democracy protesters in Hong Kong. When the coronavirus hit these shores, Feinstein was uncritical of China and one of the first to cry “racism” against those who pointed out the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, China.
Ben Weingarten wondered how a motivated and empowered prosecutor would operate if tasked to explore “any links and/or coordination” between the Chinese government, Feinstein and individuals associated with her office. Such an investigation never took place with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the most servile apologist of Communist China since Anna Louise Strong, and certainly the most influential. On the other hand, Donald Trump was thoroughly investigated for “collusion” with Russia, which turned out to be a hoax.
It was the president’s tweet that brought Feinstein’s Chinese spy to public attention. President Trump has access to all U.S. intelligence, a major reason domestic and foreign foes alike are desperately trying to remove him from office. In his April 19 press conference, the president called the upper reaches of the DOJ and FBI “human scum,” and their inattention to Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and other high-profile Democrats confirms that the rot continues.
President Trump is now throwing down with the invisible enemy of coronavirus and making progress despite opposition from Democrats and their media allies. As they parrot Chinese propaganda, the president has already started the decoupling process.
“We cannot outsource our independence,” the president said last Monday. “We cannot be reliant on foreign nations. I’ve been saying this for a long time. If we’ve learned one thing it’s let's do it here, let’s build it here, let’s make it here.”
As with the USSR, we don’t need China for anything. And as Chuck Berry said, anything you want they got right here in the USA.
Joe Biden? Seriously?
The establishment narrative on Joe Biden is, to put it mildly, malarkey. Gropey J actually is everything the liberals accuse Donald Trump of being – bizarre, vulgar, dumb, corrupt, incompetent, and utterly unfit to be president. But yet the Creepy Veepy is so much more. In the last month, this totally not-senile, not-at-all-weird guy has assembled a track record of freaky behavior that would put mid-eighties Crispin Glover to shame.
Let’s review…
Corn Pop is old news. Biden’s latest rambling onion-on-the-belt monologue was something about little kids at a pool rubbing his leg hair or something – it’s so random I’m not even linking to it. There’s no best-case scenario here – he’s just creepy.
Then, for no other reason than I guess he felt like a snack, he started gnawing on his wife’s fingers in public and on camera. You know, like people do. You wonder what the thought process there was…
“Hey, sure are lots of cameras…gosh, I’m kind of hungry…oh look, an index finger. Yum.”
I’m a little surprised he didn’t pull out a packet of ketchup.
But the best part was when some guy pointed out that, you know, Biden’s loser son Lil’ Crackpipe is the poster child for corruption and Sane Joe started spazzing out and calling him “fat” and challenging him to a push-up contest for some reason.
This is just odd. And this is the candidate who, amazingly, is still in the lead for the Democrat nomination.
And then there’s the groping females thing. He still does it occasionally, though the media does its best to curtail coverage of his lecherous creeping. Do you believe there’s any chance at all that he is not going to, at some point, have some horrifying incident with some female at the White House, you know, like grabbing the Queen for a hug n’ rub, or walking absent-mindedly into the press room in a flapping robe with Little Joe and the gang in effect?
And let’s be charitable. No one has ever called Joe Biden “smart.” Well, maybe as a joke. The fact is that he’s a 40-watt guy in a 100-watt world. Haters say Trump is dumb, but he is demonstrably not dumb. The thing about Trump is that because our garbage elite hates him it tends to ascribe all possible negative characteristics to him regardless of whether they apply. Trump is cunning, crafty and has a keen sense of strategy. You may dislike him, but that does not change the fact that alone, against the full force of the elite and its media serfs, he prevailed and continues to prevail. If Trump, who managed to figure out that it would be a good idea to campaign in Wisconsin, is dumb, what does that make Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit and the sobbing losers who supported her?
No one can seriously argue that Joe Biden is smart, and no one does. They’ll either call you “racist” or start complaining about Trump. But you won’t get anyone comparing the former veep to Stephen Hawking. They just sort of elide past his staggering stupidity, perhaps hoping that whoever he picks for his veep will give him a rubber ball to play with and lock him in an Oval Office closet when it's time to do some presidenting.
He’s a totally corrupt swamp thing, and here’s the worst part of his manifest corruption – he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s corrupt, if not personally than in terms of allowing his bum kid to leverage his position. He thinks it’s A-OK for his boy Hoover to cash in all over the globe. After all, that’s what you do, right? That’s part of the benefits package for being in the liberal elite. And all these people fussing and fighting about the paternity test-failing dirtbag getting rich are totally out of line. How dare they? HOW DARE THEY!
Understand that Biden sees nothing wrong with this. Nothing. And that means there will be exponentially more of it. Hell, the useless DoJ under Trump won’t prosecute obvious graft. Do you think a DoJ that’s thrilled to have a fellow traveler back in the White House is going to root out Biden's business badness? You do? Well, then meet my unicorn Chet.
And SloJoe is utterly incompetent. This is the guy who thought they should let bin Laden skate. As Robert Gates, no Trumpie, said, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
This is the guy who wants to take your doctor, again, and impose another brilliant healthcare reform idea, again – all designed to unscrew the last big healthcare reform the Democrats passed, which he praised as “a big [vulgarity] deal.”
He wants to obey that tiresome Swedish teenager’s commands to sacrifice at the altar of the weird weather cult. He wants to appoint all Hawaiian and Scat Franciscan judges.
He wants to raise taxes, open the borders, let you pay for illegal aliens’ sex changes, and spark a civil war by taking guns from the people who don’t commit crimes.
When you think of a calm, steady, wise presence guiding the nation, you do not think of Joe Biden, though that’s what is allegedly needed to end the nightmare of the Trump presidency – you know, the record job numbers and the lack of stupid new wars. You think of Obama and Stumbles McMyturn, only dumber and touchier.
Just recently, Biden’s campaign ran an ad alleging that foreigners were “laughing” at Donald Trump. Is there any Democrat anywhere who takes America’s side in a dispute with malicious aliens? In any case, those tin pot euroweenies had plenty to cry about – Donald Trump has forced them to pay up for NATO. Of course, that will end too if Joe takes office. We’ll return to business as usual – the business as usual of being shafted for the benefit of the global bigshots.
Basically, we’ll get rid of all the peace and prosperity that Trump has brought and get back to normal – that is, people like us being plundered by the garbage elite.
Trump has a track record of success, and Democrats hate him. Joe has a track record of failure, corruption, and creepiness. Well, I guess we know why the Democrats seem to love him.
It’s out now, my new novel Collapse, the action-packed yet hilarious sequel to People's Republic, Indian Country and Wildfire. Friendless loser Never Trumpers hate it, so you’ll love it.
***One last thing. On Wednesdays, there's BONUS KURT if you're a Townhall VIP member. Sign up today. Three Kurts is better than two.
And here's the biggest laugh of all: the Democrat party's only hope is a confused old man whose corruption is oozing into the
open only because the Democrats wagered everything on impeaching President Trump.
The Democratic Party Is Wounded and Dangerous
By J.B. Shurk
Beware the wounded animal. In pain and desperation, it will do violent things. It seems to me no coincidence that Joe Biden's big win on Super Tuesday was followed by Democratic senator Chuck Schumer threatening conservative members of the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Joe Biden is hardly Lancelot to President Trump's dragon. The Democrats and the Deep State needed a first-class warrior; instead, their best option is a walking advertisement for Alzheimer's awareness. In his best days, Joe Biden was the political equivalent of Jack McCall, shooting his adversaries in the back. When he wasn't using his position of power for financial gain or stealing other people's words, he was helping his family line their own pockets. Today, he's a disoriented and stumbling shell of an unimportant political hack who looks on in confusion while his wife does his fighting for him. If you've ever wondered what happens to the shriveled soul of a lifetime liar and Democratic swindler, just cast your eyes upon Old Joe. He's a walking, talking effigy of Democratic corruption and amorality. He's what the Democratic Party usually keeps far off the main stage for the back-alley entertainment; now he's the main event, but no amount of stick-prodding by Donna Brazile or Tom Perez is going to turn Joe Biden into Fred Astaire. He's a freak-show carnival attraction at best, amazing onlookers by his ability to occasionally jumble audible words together into a sentence. The Democrats needed a man who could command a movement; all they got was a man who can barely control his own.
I'm not saying President Trump's re-election is in the bag. Far from it. We've never seen such an array of villains acting in concert to take down an American president. The Democratic Party has most of the permanent bureaucratic Deep State (as well as stealthy anti-Trump Republicans), Wall Street, Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela, cosmopolitan Europe, global warming doomsayers, the Middle East's worst terrorists, and domestic Antifa terrorists here at home all actively working to dislodge President Trump from the White House. In the past, the chiefs of our intelligence agencies and clandestine services retired into relative obscurity, cognizant that duty commanded their silent withdrawal into the pages of history. After orchestrating a coup against the American president, however, it is not unusual to see the former heads of Obama's CIA, FBI, and NSC all tirelessly justifying their criminal acts on cable news each night. The corporate news media and institutional government have spent years trying to gin up enough hysteria in the nation that mock beheadings of the president and ritual re-enactments of his assassination during summer theater might lead the American people to clamor for the real thing.
So, no, the 2020 election will not be over until all the votes have been counted on November 3, and it becomes clear that we have successfully preserved Western civilization for at least a little while longer from this most recent manifestation of Vienna's bloody 1683 siege. All I am saying is that Joe Biden was never meant to be the establishment's champion for resurrecting their oligarchic power. They wanted a formidable presidential nominee, someone who could check all the right identity politics boxes while stringing words together that were substantively meaningless while singularly inspiring. Instead, they're settling for a politician past his expiration date who sounds less crème de la crème and more soused in crème de menthe. The Democratic Party may depend on dead voters to win elections, but running dead candidates is another thing altogether.
So just because the cable news anchors and Carville clones are all high-fiving each other and cheering for managing to narrowly prevent a communist disciple of Stalin and Castro from sewing up the Democratic nomination for president by the beginning of March, don't forget how disappointed they are at heart. If Biden goes on to clinch the nomination, the Democratic Party will have managed to take all the aloof, plain, manila-folder blandness of John Kerry and combine it with the alertness and energy of a nursing home after pill rounds. This is the one whom the commentariat is celebrating right now, the guy Obama and the gang blocked from running in 2016 because they felt him not quite up for the challenge when he was four years younger. The vice president during the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, the wordsmith who marveled at Obama for being strangely "articulate" for a black guy, and the obtrusive shoulder-rubber whose chief political instinct was to sniff the hair of the wives and daughters of White House officials and visiting dignitaries. Imagine being in such dire straits because the previous Democratic president so hollowed out the party's future by losing over a thousand elected officials across the country during his time in office that the last, great hope to beat President Trump this year is just hoping to make it to bed each afternoon before saying something so inappropriate or illogical or ridiculous that Red Bernie becomes the Democrat's Dear Leader by default. For every minute of his few wakeful hours, his handlers have to be on constant guard against the possibility that a voice in Biden's head will scream, "Oh, look, a young child with wonderful-smelling hair." "Comeback Joe"? More like "Come back, Joe!"
The Democrats and the Deep State have spent the last four years constructing the greatest wag-the-dog spectacle America's ever seen in an attempt to cover up the malfeasance and criminality of the last administration, while preventing the current one from achieving too many victories. Considering that Brennan and Comey are still free and Obama and Hillary are still smiling, they've been remarkably successful. But the Mueller obfuscation and Schiff circus are behind us, the dance music of delay is dying down, and the Democrats' and Deep State's ability to keep pushing back their day of reckoning is coming to an end. If they don't win in 2020, they cannot keep justice at bay, regardless of how stacked in their favor it has always been in the past. And standing in the gap as their last-ditch prospect to save them from President Trump's re-election and spare them from long delayed judgment is none other than Corn Pop's archenemy. The one "reasonable" Democrat in the race who has already burnished his "moderate" credentials by fully embracing Bernie's Green New Deal, Warren's Medicare for All, and Beto's door-to-door gun confiscation. Nothing says "electable centrist Democrat" like "D'oh!" Biden's full tilt toward Marxist socialism. No wonder Chuck Schumer sounds like some injured animal in the forest, lashing out at tree branches all around him. That's what small, weak, dying creatures do when they know the end is near.
Image: Lorie Shaull via Flickr.
Cruz: China ‘the Single-Greatest Political Threat the United States Faces over the Next Century’
2 May 2020111
1:30
Saturday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) outlined the threat communist Asian superpower China poses to the United States, calling it the “single-great political threat” to the country over the next 100 years.
“China is in my judgment the single-greatest political threat the United States faces over the next century,” he said. “They engage in espionage. They engage in censorship. They engage in torture and murder of their own citizens. They cover up free speech.”
Cruz pointed to legislation that he was introducing. One imposes sanctions on Chinese government officials for the coronavirus “coverup,” as he deemed it. Another he was introducing took aim at Hollywood for kowtowing to the Chinese government in movie scripts.
“The Script Act says we’re not going to allow the Pentagon to cooperate with moviemakers, to let them use ships and jet airplanes and equipment if they are going to allow the Chinese government to censor,” he said. “And so it uses the power of government to stop Chinese censorship through Hollywood.”
The Texas Republican U.S. Senator pointed to the soon-to-be-released sequel to “Top Gun,” which stars Tom Cruise. Reportedly, the Japanese and Taiwanese flags were removed from a jacket worn by Cruise’s “Maverick” in the sequel at the behest of Chinese censors.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
Joe Biden Endorses Drug Sentencing Reform That Would Benefit Hunter
Bill would eliminate disparity between powder cocaine and crack offenses
President Joe Biden's administration on Tuesday announced its support for bipartisan legislation that would end the sentencing disparity among drug offenses involving crack and powder cocaine.
The administration's endorsement is likely to draw scrutiny from ethics experts, given how the proposed sentencing reform could benefit Hunter Biden, the president's crackhead son. Hunter detailed his "next-level" addiction to crack cocaine in his recently published memoir, Beautiful Things. The late Jim Morrison "was a fucking piker compared to my shenanigans," he boasted.
A mediocre author at best, Hunter is at his most eloquent when describing his love of smoking crack. "The sensation is one of utter, almost otherworldly well-being," he writes. "You are at once energetic, focused, and calm. Blood rushes to every extremity; your skin ripples with what feels like bumblebees." That first hit of the pipe is like "being transported—at something like warp speed, as if riding bareback on a rocket ship—to some far-off, beautiful place."
Hunter is also a fan of powder cocaine. In Beautiful Things, he recounts using it in Monte Carlo during a Burisma board retreat. The controversial Ukrainian energy firm paid him up to $50,000 a month for the privilege of putting his name on corporate documents, enabling his addiction to crack, which will always be his drug of choice.
Given his family name and political affiliation, the First Son is unlikely to face any legal consequences for his "nonstop depravity." But the new legislation would ensure, at least in theory, that Hunter would be treated more leniently if charged with a future crack cocaine-related offense.
President Biden's support for the legislation, called the "Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law Act," is consistent with his campaign pledge to eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. Yet it is Biden, as a U.S. senator in 1986, who authored the legislation that created the disparity by imposing a minimum five-year sentence for trafficking in 500 grams of powder cocaine or just 5 grams of crack cocaine.
Hunter Biden, who is allegedly in recovery, is pursuing a career as an artist in California, where he rents a $5.4 million mansion. He is planning an art exhibition this fall in New York, where "confidential" buyers will be able to buy his paintings for as much as $500,000 each. Meanwhile, the First Son is still "working to unwind" his 10 percent stake in a shadowy Chinese investment firm.
Biden Shortchanges Defense Program Aimed at Stopping China
Lawmakers hammer White House for meager spending in Pacific Deterrence Initiative
The Biden administration in its 2022 defense budget underfunded a vital program dedicated to stopping China from advancing in parts of the Pacific Ocean.
The administration fell about $1 billion short of the $4.7 billion the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command requested. Lawmakers and experts told the Washington Free Beacon the Biden budget's neglect of the program will enable China and discourage allies, putting armed forces in the Pacific in a dangerous position.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Biden budget shows a major "disconnect" between what the Department of Defense needs and what the White House is willing to give it. Blackburn pointed to the Guam Defense System—a massively underfunded program tasked with protecting the more than 160,000 U.S. citizens living on the island—as a major disappointment. The Indo-Pacific Command chief requested $360 million for the Guam system and only received $118.3 million for the program.
"It is our constitutional command to provide for the common defense," Blackburn said. "The Indo-Pacific command chief got less than half of what he asked for. It shows you how far off base they are with this."
Guam’s defense is critical as one of the United States's westernmost holdings in the Pacific, giving the U.S. armed forces significant access to the area where China is closest. China has a complex system of rockets, bombers, and submarines that could leave Guam vulnerable to attack. The difficult terrain of the island and range of Chinese capabilities make Guam a difficult place to defend and standing U.S. defenses may not be sufficient, Missile Defense Agency chief John Hill said in June. In March, Adm. Phil Davidson called Guam a "target today" for China.
Mark Montgomery, a former Navy rear admiral and senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said the Biden White House should have been taking a hard look at the Guam issue from "day one" when it put together a China task force.
"This is a key point where they should have been studying from day one because this budget issue was going to rear its head in three to four months—and it did," Montgomery said. "They kind of took a pass by funding it at one-third. They’re not really picking any decision."
The budget for the broader initiative has several problems. A meager sum of only $500,000 is dedicated to alliance building, and less than 1 percent of the program’s funds will go to preparing soldiers for a potential attack.
Dustin Walker, the former lead adviser on the Indo-Pacific for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the defense program is a "swing and a miss" for the Biden administration's Pentagon.
"This was the Pentagon’s first opportunity to implement PDI [Pacific Deterrence Initiative], and it was just a complete swing and a miss," Walker said. "In fact, they missed the mark so badly on PDI, you almost have to ask if it was deliberate."
Montgomery said Congress must make adjustments to the budget's shortfalls or American security will face dire consequences.
"If Congress doesn’t fix this, two things are going to happen," Montgomery said. "One, China will lean into it. There’s a strong signal to China that we’re not that interested in deterring [them]. Our actions do not follow our words on this. It has an impact on your allies and partners as well. The second thing is that we will be less ready to fight."
Blackburn contrasted Biden's approach to China’s massive buildup of naval capabilities, which could threaten Guam and Taiwan in the next decade.
"The Chinese have spent the last 25 years trying to modernize their Navy…. When you look at our battleships versus theirs, they’re surpassing us." Blackburn said. "This [program] is vital when you look at great power competition and you look at the blue-water navy that China is very aggressively building."
Republican lawmakers criticized the Biden defense budget in interviews with the Free Beacon for its rollback of plans drafted in the Trump administration to expand the Navy. The Chinese navy officially overtook the United States for having the most ships in the world, and it is currently building a third aircraft carrier.
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
Published under: China, Defense, Defense Budget,
Biden can’t even do brief remarks welcoming an ally without reading notecards
A friend emailed me the less than 5 minute video below of President Biden seated next to the President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, welcoming him to the White House.
She writes:
Does anyone remember a time where the POTUS needed to read his brief remarks? Even Rivlin, who doesn’t speak English as his native language, was able to give his remarks off of the top of his head
While Biden did look up from his notes from time to time, he must have been worried that he’d “get into trouble” with the people whose wishes he carries out, because he kept lookkng down and reading most of the time. This was not glancing at notes to refresh his mind about key points. This weas reading his script. Notice the note card on his knee:
Even -- somewhat weirdly -- when he used hand gestures:
Here is the complete 4 minutes and 46 seconds.
Photos: YouTube screengrabs
The Top Ten Pending Eruptions
It’s shaping up to be a long, hot summer, one filled -- like Yellowstone Park -- with geysers and hot springs ready to blow at any moment. But these are political eruptions, not nature's fury. If I didn’t know that God has things under control I’d be terrified, but in the interest of keeping track of the truth let’s list the top 10 political eruptions we can expect to blow sometime soon.
10. Hunter Biden. He’s at the end of the list because what happens with him is not likely to directly impact any of us, but he’s such a shocking collection of immoralities and corruptions that we all know deep in our bones that such nastiness cannot be condoned in a reasonable, prosperous, free society. Hardly a week goes by without some new scandal surfacing, and each seems worse than the last. Now he’s selling “paintings” as a money-laundering scheme. He and his slimy doings are bad enough by themselves, but he’s the president’s son. Sooner or later something has to be done about him and about the part his father has played in all of it.
9. Speaking of whom, something is also going to have to be done about Joe’s mental state, but that is complicated by the fact that Kamala’s mental acuity is not much better. She’s not suffering from dementia per se, but I suspect that she’s never been all that bright. And Pelosi is next in line and her mental problems border on insanity. So, what we will do about this mortifying state of affairs is going to require some divine intervention -- and soon -- have you heard him whisper/hiss his way through a press briefing? Yikes.
8. Critical Race Theory and the communist infiltration in our schools make up my #8. I’m thrilled to see angry parents accosting school boards. We need a lot more of that. I’m also thrilled to see parents pulling their kids from public schools and educating their children at home. Will we be able to rectify the damage that’s been done? It will be hard because we have a couple of generations of teachers who have succumbed to the propaganda, so who do we find to teach the kids the truth? It will be interesting to see how this shapes up this summer. It’s a desperate issue because our 1st Amendment is at stake here.
7. Not only is our 1st Amendment being challenged, so is the 2nd Amendment. These are lines we cannot cross and yet every time there’s a shooting the ante ratchets up another notch and we all know that if the 2nd Amendment goes, the 1st disintegrates and without those we have no freedoms of any kind. This assault on our freedoms of speech is made worse by the power of the mega-media and its desire to shut us up. It’s a relief to see some states staking out their ground on this issue. Sooner or later we’ll see a three-way face-off amongst states’ rights, federal overreach, and Big Tech.
6. Which makes me think of the McClusky’s in St. Louis, which gets us to our Number 6 – inner city violence. Portland’s riot squad -- all 50 of them -- have resigned and no sane person can blame them. The murder rate there is up over 500%. Baltimore’s murder rate has hit a new high and Chicago is now the shooting capital of the country. Police are being sued, shot at, and defunded, so I doubt there’ll be much help from that quarter and here we are in riot season. The temperature in Portland and Seattle is stuck at triple digits -- will that shut down the rioting or heat it up? We’ll see.
5. Government spending and the national debt is resulting in inflation. The last year’s lockdowns are still stifling the economy. People who are harvesting government stay-at-home subsidies are weakening businesses that can’t find enough labor. Confusingly, the jobless numbers don’t look good, either. We’re financially walking a very shaky tightrope.
4. At number 4 I’ve put the border crises/invasion. Of course all will be well now that Kamala has visited El Paso, but we don’t see a lot of hope here. I’m thrilled that Texas has taken this bull by its horns and pledged to finish its part of the wall. I’m pleased to see that both Florida and Nebraska are sending troops down there to help out. But the solution we were well on way to has vanished. The situation is deadly with summer scorching the deserts; cartels attacking ranch owners on the border; and drugs, disease, and criminals flooding in.
3. Number 3 on my list is the whole mess with COVID-19 origins, treatment suppression, Fauci/Wuhan/Google/Gates and the vaccine side effects. I can’t even imagine how all of that is going to get untangled because every day a new piece of damning information rises to the surface and raises even more concerns. Something needs to be done about Cuomo and his malfeasance with the nursing home deaths. Something needs to be done to atone for all the people who could have been treated with either Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine but were denied those medications. How do we relieve the paralyzing fear so many are stuck in? How do we help children who were adversely affected by school closures? How do we resurrect our small businesses? Most important of all, how do we prevent this from happening again?
2. It’s hard to decide between my 1st and 2nd concerns. But let’s go with the election audit efforts as Number 2. I’d put it at Number 1 if I thought there was much of a chance that Trump could be reinstated, but right now that seems like a pipe dream. But whether the recounts show the massive fraud most of us expect or not, the distrust this has engendered is monumental, the 2022 midterms are barreling down on us, and this needs sorting out now. I am so grateful for all the people who are fighting this battle, for all who are working hard in the audits. I just can’t picture what the outcome will be, but it better be soon.
1. I’ve put in first place China for several reasons. Trump always said they were our biggest problem and he’s been right about everything else. It’s also becoming obvious that China was behind the pandemic -- accidently or otherwise -- and we’re starting to see that China has been infiltrating our universities, fomenting racial hatred, and generally chipping away at our most sacred institutions. It also looks like they played an important part in rigging the 2020 election. Now they’re threatening our ally Taiwan and making trouble in Hong Kong. They’re imprisoning their own people on religious grounds -- torture and slavery a big part of their anti-Islam program. They’re building a huge navy and messing around in the South China Sea. They’re up to something, and none of it is good.
These aren’t the only problems facing America right now, but they are the biggest volcanoes threatening our nation. We don’t know when each one will blow, but blow they will; they must. The pressure has to be released. Let’s each make our own list, or use this one as a prayer agenda, and get down on our knees. If these all go off at once, only God can help us.
Deana Chadwell blogs at www.ASingleWindow.com. She is also an adjunct professor and department head at Pacific Bible College in southern Oregon. She teaches writing, logic, and literature.
Image: Darkimages08
The top 100 79 Bidenisms of all time
I collect Bidenisms. A "Bidenism" is any dumb thing Joe Biden says. It can be a mispronunciation, malapropism, factual misstatement, stutter, or plain lie.
I have around 1,000 Bidenisms in my collection. I have already self-published one book with over 400 Bidenisms and have three more in various stages of completion, all from 2021. If anyone knows Bidenisms, it is I.
For the readers' edification and entertainment, I now present my list of the Top 100 79 Bidenisms of All Time. This list wasn't easy! I had a Casanova problem. Just as Casanova's problem was too many women and not enough time, my problem is too many Bidenisms and not enough word count. I'd wanted to reach 100 Bidenisms, but I ran out of room.
I'll not be able here to state the date or source of these Bidenisms, but believe me: I can and will be happy to do so on request.
Here goes!
- "Everywhere I been hearing all around the country. You're trying your BREAST, but it never FEELS like enough."
A VERY COMMON COMPLAINT, indeed!
- "...kinds of things that have to be done, um, you know, there's a, ah, during World War, Two, uh, you know, what Roosevelt came up with a thing, uh, you know, that was, uh, totally different than a, than the, the ah, he called it, ah, you know, the World War II, he had the war, the the War Production Board."
- "I am a gaffe machine."
- "Ahh, successful dump. I dropped everything at the dump; it all worked out, and by the way, I got a second load, guys; anyone who wants to help me unload..."
- , "The pandemic is that the president has no INTERCOURSE whatsoever with the rest of the country — uh, the world."
- "We choose truth over facts!"
- "3-letter word: 'Jobs.' J - O - B - S, jobs"
- "You're you're a lying dog-faced pony soldier. "
- "If I'm your president, I'm gonna fight like hell to see your strength goes. I promise."
- "I moved a little steel town."
- "HARRIS / BIDEN Administration"
- "I don't count drunk driving as a felony."
- "Let's clap for that, you stupid blackguards!" (or: "bastards")
- "It's a right, for people to have badakathcare."
- "You know, the r-rapidly rising, ah, ahm, in with, ah, with ah, I don't know, with ah – "
- "I'M GOING TO BEAT JOE BIDEN."
- "An independent analysis found that my plan will slash the cost of prescription jugs by 60%."
- "to create good-paying union jobs, to litter the promise of America"
- "put millions of citizens on a path to citizenship."
- Biden accused the president of telling a "ball-faced lie."
- veterans of "Wool War II."
- "we can prisclaim the Palmist, what the Palmist ..."
- Tim Alberta asked Biden about being the oldest president ever, and Biden asked, "What about WINSTON CHURCHILL? "
- "I'm a Democratic candidate for United States Senate — vote for the other Biden " (said in 2020).
- "We'll make sure it's not quality; we'll make sure it's only affordable."
- "Doug Emhoff, uh, Kamala's WIFE,"
- "Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as White kids."
- "my deceased wife is a teacher."
- "I mean, shylocks who took advantage"
- "I'm Joe Biden's husband, Joe Biden."
- "Trump won significantly the last two times,"
- "that should be a mistermeanor"
- "He's elected to the next election."
- "I'll lead an effective strategy to mobilize trunalimunumaprzure."
- "WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT VERMONT...I like Keene (NH) a lot."
- "Visit Iowal.com slash Ohio!"
- "I got to the Senate 180 YEARS AGO."
- "We hold these truths to be self-full evident, all men and women created, by the, go, you know the, you know the thing."
- the "Obama O'Biden" administration.
- "...a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, an O'Biden-Bama Democrat."
- "I'm ready on Day 1 after more than three years in office"
- "to get our kids to market safely."
- " ...White supremacists — Nazi sympathizers — carrin' Nazi fags — flags..."
- "President-Elect Harris took it" (a vaccine)
- "you're a 1-horse pony."
- "Everybody, everybody is entritled to be teated with decency and dignity."
- "And I, aw, wanna share the message directly with the Department of FENCE — Defense staff. "
- "DoDY China task force"
- "for the proud Tuskegee — Tuskejee — Airmen"
- "I don't know what I'm signing huh. "
- Signing then handing over an Executive Order to VP Harris, Biden said, "Take this to the President."
- "These are BRILLS that receive votes"
- "I came to the United States Senate 120 years ago."
- "these MILLSTONES no more — no longer mark our national mourning — these milestone, I should say"
- "Our girl goal is to do everything..."
- "Wildfires burned more than 5,000 acres in the West — an area, roughly the size of the entire State of New Jersey."
- "I'm either here I'm eager to hear, NIGGER'd here next, by my good friends,..."
- "Uhh, I wanna make sure we thank, the Secretary, for all he's done." Once again, Biden had forgotten the name of his own Secretary of DoD.
- Climate change is a "SEXessential threat to the planet."
- "development of transformendale and transformidible technologies."
- "...A moaner of peril... "
- "it's undeniable, undebilex"
- "catastrophic failures with titragic results."
- "manufracturing manufracturing workers"
- "And Sydney, you're 14 years old."
- "I, uh, love those barrettes in your hair, man. I tell you what, I look at her; she looks like she's 19 years old, sittin' there with her, like a little lady with her legs crossed." The LITTLE girl in question is around NINE years old.
- "Indition, I'd like to point out"...
- "Mamerica's vaccine supply secured"...
- "I know this gonna sound PROZAIC, but, I think we're in a contest, not with China per se, but a CONTEXT with autocrats"
- "urgent need to preserve and reopen humanitarian CARTERS in Syria" (He meant, CORRIDORS.)
- "By HARASSING the full potential of uh, those who are HARASSING..."
- "Jake (Sullivan) is my NASA security advisor" (He meant "NATIONAL.")
- "Visit vaccines dot GUM, dot gov, vaccines dot GUM"
- "By the way! The SAME STABLE JESUS said the biggest problem we had in the, in the Revolutionary War, is WE DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH AIRPORTS!"
- "Governor Lujan Grisham of MEXICO."
- "This can be among mong most important things you do"
- "I'm always worried...(cheers)...I'm always worried, when I come back to North Clayana" (North Carolina).
- "put a million shots in the arms of my first 100 days as President"
- "We need more MARRIAGE to follow" — Biden wanted to say "MAYORS."
Th-th-th-th-that's all, folks! I'm out of word count!
Image: Gage Skidmore.
The incredible shrinking Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris is creating a problem. That comes as a surprise. I figured she’d be President by now. The cognitive decline of the Elected Official Formerly Known as Joe Biden is plain to see. The old Joe was a glib glad-hander who played the game as well as anyone. He could explain without missing a beat his devout Catholicism and his simultaneous support for abortion on demand. He was also quite electable, to a point. SNL’s Woody Harrelson mocked him gently: “I’m like plastic straws. I’ve been around forever. I’ve always worked. And now you’re mad at me?”
The frail, wandering Biden who emerged from his basement for a mini-campaign sometimes resembled an audio-animatronic replica of the veteran pol. But few other candidates developed even momentary traction -- certainly not Kamala Harris, the oddly off-putting junior senator from California, who checked several boxes but never contested a primary. When she was tapped as VP, the outline of a scheme began to emerge. The mainstream media, propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, would haul Joe across the finish line by praising manufactured virtues and burying ugly truths. The loyal or clueless would pull the Biden lever. Dead people and photocopies would provide the winning margin. Then, after a dignified interval, he could “develop some disease and say he’d have to resign,” as he told us plainly, on camera with Harris. That card could be played whenever needed. Let the con run too long, and the public would get wise. Joe was certainly not up to the task of his new office. When he repeated aloud the whispered directive from his earpiece to “salute the Marines” upon entering the White House on inauguration day, we knew it wouldn’t get better. Six months of word salads and vacant stares from the leader of the free world have removed any doubt.
The problem? VP Harris is not ready for prime time.
California is a foreign country. They do things differently there. Who knows how one gets elected senator? Harris has already proved it wasn’t by putting in long days solving complex problems with her vast intellectual resources and leadership ability. She has no intention of doing the heavy lifting. Even if she did, she couldn’t pull it off.
Peddling Marxist snake oil isn’t easy work. When the proposed solution will obviously make things worse, you’ve got to be Harold Hill from The Music Man to talk people into it. When it actually does make things worse, only the most talented magician can 
convince the public not to believe their lyin’ eyes. Bill Clinton could do it. He was the master. He could hand you a flower to distract you while he stole your wallet, and you’d press that flower in the family Bible and treasure it forever. Barack Obama, radical leftist dressed as a benevolent high-school principal, could do it. Kamala Harris can’t. Her go-to strategy is to cackle at the sad souls who are just too dumb to get it on their own.
Her big audition for the Presidential tag-in was her selection as Border Czar. “Stem the migration” was her assigned task -- a canard, of course. This administration’s goal is to erase the border altogether, creating an unending stream of fresh leftist voters who will ensure perpetual Democrat rule. The inevitable by-products of that open-border policy are a tsunami of deadly narcotics, an abomination of human trafficking, a notable increase in violent crime, and untold personal misery among the illegal immigrants themselves, all visible already. Harris’s real task is to divert attention and buy time by justifying the unjustifiable cost of the left’s lust for power. She’s failing. Why?
She lacks the necessary patience and humility. Like many powerful people deluded by sycophants into imagining their every utterance is sheer brilliance, she can hardly believe she has to make a better case to the American people.
She doesn’t appreciate her friends. The media stand ready to push any narrative she concocts. Her one job is to give them something they can work with. It would sound like this: Sentence 1: “Here I am, handling the problem.” Sentence 2: “It’s all Donald Trump’s fault.” Sentence 3: Anything remotely usable. Harris is letting her friends down. She didn’t even travel to the border for three-plus months, then went nowhere near the epicenter of the crisis. She snapped at reporters for pointing out her failings, then failed afresh by giving them nothing worth printing. Even a Democrat congressman felt obliged to chide her.
Harris has neither the energy nor the artistry to pull this off. Also, she openly despises half the American public. In politics, that’s a real obstacle to effectiveness.
I am reminded of two things: a photo, and an old joke.
When First Lady Hillary Clinton left the White House, she charted a course to the Presidency, which she believed she deserved all along. She bought an estate in a posh New York town and was soon elected to the Senate. Among the memorable photos of her in office is a telling portrait of a tired, haggard-looking Senator Clinton attending some hearing about which she clearly cares not one bit. She is leaning chin in hand, eyes heavy-lidded, wrapped in a pashmina. Serving in the Senate turned out to be a lot of work.
The old joke is so old it’s not even searchable online. Decades ago, in the former Soviet Union, a series of races was held between two cars: an American Ford and a Russian Moscvich. The Ford won them all. A Pravda reporter had to spin the result. “The Moscvich never placed lower than second,” he wrote, “but the Ford was always next to last.”
That, comrades, is the sort of cleverness and chutzpah it takes to defend the indefensible. The heir-apparent to the Oval Office demonstrates neither. Joe Biden’s handlers, whoever they are, have a problem. It’s already time to pull their starting pitcher -- but the reliever in the bullpen isn’t major-league material.
Image: Gage Skidmore
Hunter Biden-Linked Law Firm Dodged Lobbying Disclosures for Burisma Work
Emails from Biden's laptop reveal relationship with Boies Schiller Flexner
The prominent law firm for which Hunter Biden served as counsel took steps to avoid disclosing to Congress its work with Ukrainian energy giant Burisma Holdings, emails from Biden's laptop show.
Heather King, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, detailed the lobbying strategy in emails to Biden, his business partners, and an executive for Burisma Holdings in 2014. King wrote that she planned to provide legal and political services for Burisma "right up to the line" at which the law firm would have to disclose the work under federal lobbying laws. King also wrote of plans to meet with State Department officials in order to advocate for Burisma, which was seeking to expand its operations in the West as its owner was the subject of an international bribery investigation.
The emails highlight the gray area of federal lobbying laws, which provide some exemptions for lawyers. King's strategy to avoid registering under the Lobbying Disclosure Act or the more stringent Foreign Agents Registration Act was for Burisma to hire the firm ML Strategies as its lobbyist of record.
Boies Schiller Flexner has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but another Hunter Biden-linked firm, Blue Star Strategies, is under federal investigation for its undisclosed lobbying for Burisma. Biden also helped facilitate Blue Star's consulting deal with Burisma, emails show. Rudy Giuliani, a personal lawyer for former president Donald Trump, is also under federal investigation for his foreign lobbying activities.
Boies Schiller Flexner's arrangement with Burisma appeared to be an example of a firm trying to avoid having to publicly disclose its lobbying activities, one government ethics watchdog told the Washington Free Beacon.
"There is a lot of lobbying that takes place that's never reported," said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight. He said that lawyers and consultants often "play fast and loose" with lobbying laws by characterizing their lobbying as educational activity or by operating just under the threshold where lobbying is legally required to be disclosed.
A lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, who declined to speak on the record, insisted that the firm complied with lobbying laws.
Biden connected Burisma Holdings and Boies Schiller Flexner in April 2014, shortly after he joined the energy company's board of directors. Burisma paid Biden and a business partner, Devon Archer, more than $80,000 a month to help the company burnish its reputation in the West and scout out energy deals. Biden's board position has come under scrutiny because of his father's role at the time leading the Obama administration's diplomatic talks with Ukraine.
King took the lead in developing Boies Schiller Flexner's strategy for Burisma, according to emails from Biden's laptop obtained by the Free Beacon. King was a member of the firm's Crisis Management and Government Response Team. Biden referred Burisma to the team. Other emails show that a recent Justice Department nominee, Hampton Dellinger, worked on the crisis management team at Boies Schiller Flexner.
King wrote in the May 2014 emails that she wanted to contact State Department officials to "‘update' them on Burisma's current situation." She also told Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi that she planned to attend meetings with government officials alongside David Leiter, the owner of ML Strategies.
"We at [Boies Schiller Flexner] will lead all this work and can execute the political and legal work right up to the line where we would need to register as lobbyists, but I don't want to register under the lobbying disclosure act or the foreign agents registration act," King wrote in a May 12, 2014, email to Biden and Archer.
In an email to Pozharskyi, King said she planned to accompany Leiter in his meetings with government officials. She said that she would be at the meeting "strictly as" a lawyer for Burisma because she was not registered to lobby.
Burisma wired $250,000 to Boies Schiller Flexner on May 7, 2014, according to documents on Biden's laptop. ML Strategies disclosed receiving $90,000 in 2014 to lobby for Burisma. The Boies Schiller Flexner connection is not disclosed in those filings.
Other emails show that Boies Schiller Flexner paid $13,000 a month for consulting work.
Boies Schiller Flexner has come under scrutiny in recent years for its behind-the-scenes influence activities. The company hired Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence firm, to spy on victims of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. David Boies, the founder of the law firm, represented Theranos, a blood test maker whose owner was indicted for defrauding the government. A Wall Street Journal reporter who published a series of exposés on Theranos has said that Boies and King tried to pressure the paper to kill negative stories about Theranos.
King temporarily left Boies Schiller Flexner in 2015 to serve as general counsel for Theranos.
Hunter Biden-Linked Legislative Group Has Partnered for Years With a Chinese Propaganda Front
The State Legislative Leaders Foundation facilitated Hunter Biden's first trip to China
A nonprofit group backed by some of America’s biggest companies and linked to Hunter Biden works closely with a Chinese Communist Party front group accused of trying to influence state and local policymakers.
Since 2015, the State Legislative Leaders Foundation has partnered with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, a Communist Party-affiliated propaganda organization. In 2010, a foundation adviser facilitated Hunter Biden's first business trip to China.
U.S. officials have voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Association, saying that Beijing uses it to influence the West. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in a 2018 report that the association performs intelligence and propaganda functions for the CCP. Last year, the State Department pulled out of a national governors' convention because of the group’s involvement in the event. Then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo said that the association sought to "malignly influence" local leaders.
The State Legislative Leaders Foundation is funded by nearly 70 major companies and industry groups, including Facebook, Google, Comcast, and Apple. It hosts forums for leaders in statehouses across the country. The group also hosts summits for legislators and major corporations, both domestic and international.
Founded in 1972, the foundation’s first foray into China was in 2009 at a summit arranged by Michael Lin and James Bulger. The two businessmen would later join Hunter Biden at a private equity firm that brokered a controversial deal to sell a U.S. auto parts maker to a Chinese government-linked aviation company.
The foundation has developed extensive contacts in both the United States and China. Last week, its president Stephen Lakis gave a keynote speech at a summit for some of the top think tanks in the United States. The summit was hosted by the China Public Diplomacy Association, another CCP-linked front organization that has Chinese People’s Association members on its board. Officials with the Chinese government, state-controlled media outlets, and Beijing’s main foreign-language propaganda agency spoke at the event.
California Senate Majority Leader Robert Hertzberg, a director of the foundation, was also a panelist at the forum. The Democrat is one of the country’s most prominent state lawmakers to appear at the group’s China-focused events. California state financial disclosures reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show that the Chinese People’s Association and State Legislative Leaders Foundation have each paid around $7,500 for Hertzberg’s trips to China summits in 2016, 2018, and 2019. Photos of the events posted on a Chinese social networking site show Hertzberg met with Chinese Communist Party provincial leaders on at least two of those trips.
While the State Legislative Leaders Foundation does not outwardly lobby, it appears to serve as a matchmaker of sorts for its corporate donors and state lawmakers. That dynamic is highlighted in emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop obtained by the Free Beacon.
In March 2015, Bulger emailed Biden with an offer to help a Chinese-government linked aviation company purchase an American auto parts maker.
Bulger told Biden the deal "might be disconcerting to local stakeholders such as Unions and local elected officials concerned about job losses to an overseas buyer."
"In order to mitigate such valid concerns it would be wise for me to meet local elected officials (through SLLF contacts) and brief them on our plans for the business post purchase," Bulger wrote.
Biden responded to the email saying he was worried offshoring jobs would generate negative press.
The deal eventually went through. Aviation Industry Corporation of China bought a controlling stake in Michigan-based parts maker Henniges Automotive for $600 million. BHR Partners, the consortium to which Biden and Bulger belonged, held a 49 percent stake in the deal.
Bulger did not respond to a request to comment on whether he contacted the lawmakers he knew through the foundation. Lin also did not respond to a request for comment.
The two partners arranged Biden’s first business trip to China in April 2010. The trip was highlighted in a report that Senate Republicans released last year on Biden’s foreign business dealings. Republicans said that Biden’s visit led to future business opportunities for him in China.
Months before that junket, Lin and Bulger organized the State Legislative Leaders Foundation’s first summit in Beijing. Lin said in a speech after the event that leaders from statehouses across the United States attended the forum, alongside Chinese government officials and senior executives from companies like Coca-Cola, Bank of America, and Bank of Beijing.
According to a transcript of his remarks, Lin said the summit could help China develop business relationships that could yield "new resources" and technology for Beijing.
State Legislative Leaders Foundation tax filings for 2009 show the summit was "held in conjunction with the Chinese government."
The foundation brought in between $3 million and $4 million in revenue each year for the past decade. Tax filings show that the group’s corporate backers contribute between $15,000 and $50,000 to serve on the group’s advisory council. The Motion Picture Association of America gave $45,000 to the group in 2017, while the Wireless Association gave $35,000.
Lakis’s salary has grown considerably over the past decade. He was paid $548,000 in 2018, up from $327,000 in 2008, according to the foundation’s tax filings.
Lin and Bulger entered a second partnership with the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and Lakis in 2018 through a venture called Michelangelo Investment Holdings Limited. According to the company’s posts on the Chinese networking website Sodu.com, Michelangelo joined the foundation’s advisory council in May 2018. The only other Chinese company on the advisory council was DJI, the Chinese drone maker. The Trump administration blacklisted DJI last year over its suspected ties to the Chinese government.
Michelangelo’s now-defunct website touted its links to politically connected figures, including Lakis, state lawmakers, and both Joe and Hunter Biden. An archived version of the website features an undated photo of Hunter Biden at a BHR Partners meeting. In another photo, Lin is seen posing with Joe Biden at an event in 2017.
Michelangelo also posted a summary of Lin and Bulger’s meetings in the United States, as well as of State Legislative Leaders Foundation’s third China-U.S. Provincial and State Legislature Cooperation Forum, which was held on Nov. 29, 2018, in Las Vegas.
Dozens of state legislators from across the United States attended the forum, as did the president of the Chinese People’s Association, China’s ambassador to the United States, and several consular officials. The website says that Hertzberg, the California state senator, met with a Communist Party official from the Hebei Provincial Standing Committee.
One photo shows Lin posing with Hertzberg. Another shows Lin and Bulger dining with Eric Schwerin, a longtime Hunter Biden business partner.
Hertzberg’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The State Legislative Leaders Foundation and Lakis also did not respond to a request for comment.
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