James Comer: Joe Biden Skips Deadline to Correct False Denial of Family China Payout
President Joe Biden on Monday missed the deadline set by House Oversight Committee James Comer (R-KY) to correct his false statement that his family never received China payouts in 2017 — causing Comer to vow to further pursue Biden family bank revelations.
“Not true,” Joe Biden falsely claimed on March 17 about the $1.3 collective payments four of Biden family members received through a family business associate — contradicting his son’s confession.
After the false claim, Comer demanded the White House correct Biden’s false statement before Monday’s deadline. But no correction was forthcoming.
On Tuesday, Comer told Breitbart News he was not surprised Joe Biden has continued to lie about the payments that were made upon peddling influence to Joe Biden.
“Bank records don’t lie but it’s no surprise that President Biden continues to be dishonest with the American people about his family using the Biden name to enrich themselves through shady deals,” Comer said.
White House Spox DODGES Question About Chinese Payments to Biden Family: “I’m Just Not Going to Even Respond”:
The White House / YouTube“President Biden said he didn’t know anything about his son’s foreign business deals, which has been proven false multiple times,” Comer continued. “Now, President Biden refuses to correct the record about his family receiving over $1 million in payments from a Chinese energy company through their associate.”
At least seven times Joe Biden or his communications team have denied outright and deflected questions about involvement in the Biden family business. But more than at least 17 instances show that Joe Biden was involved in the business.
Comer also took a swipe at the establishment media for not holding the president accountable for his false statement.
“Give Me a Break, Man”: Biden SNAPS at Reporter Asking About Family’s Business Relations in China:
The White House“The mainstream media may give President Biden a pass but the Oversight Committee won’t,” he said. “We will continue to pursue more bank records to expose the Biden family’s business schemes and bring more evidence to light. Accountability is coming.”
Comer has stated he retrieve more tranches of Biden bank records.
“This is just the beginning,” he told Fox News. “We’re going to get a lot more bank records, and they’re going to have to continue to backpedal and come up with some type of reason why the Biden family has received millions and millions of dollars from our adversaries.”
KJP Walks Away from Question About Hallie Biden:
C-SPANIn 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Chinese Communist Party Uses Dem Lawmaker to Declare TikTok Ban Racist
China's Foreign Ministry quotes Mark Pocan after Wisconsin Dem called TikTok's opponents 'xenophobic'
The Chinese Communist Party is using a Democratic congressman from Wisconsin to argue that calls to ban TikTok in the United States are part of a racist "witch hunt."
After a bipartisan group of lawmakers during a Thursday hearing grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew over the app's ties to the CCP, China's foreign ministry condemned the hearing in a press conference. Chinese propaganda outlet Global Times quickly highlighted the government's response in a story headlined, "China denounces US TikTok ban threat as 'xenophobic witch hunt,' firmly opposes possible forced sale." But the "xenophobic witch hunt" line did not come from China—the communist nation was actually quoting Wisconsin Democratic congressman Mark Pocan.
One day before the hearing, Pocan spoke at a "Keep TikTok" rally, which saw online content creators and liberal politicians voice their support for the Chinese app. During his speech, Pocan argued that banning TikTok "isn't the answer" and accused those in Congress who support a ban of conducting a "xenophobic witch hunt." It took just two days for the CCP to weaponize Pocan's remark, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning noting in her Friday press conference "that some U.S. lawmaker has said that to seek a TikTok ban is a 'xenophobic witch hunt.'"
Pocan's defense of TikTok came as the app, which is owned by China's ByteDance, mounted an aggressive effort to circumvent a ban. TikTok in early March tapped top Democratic public relations firm SKDK to provide "communications support," a move that likely bought the app a line to top liberals. Anita Dunn, an SKDK founding partner, is a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, and the firm's executive vice president, Justin Goodman, served as Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer's (D., N.Y.) communications director as recently as November. TikTok has also funneled large contributions to progressive organizations—it sent a combined $300,000 to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus in December.
Pocan, who did not return a request for comment, is far from the only congressional Democrat to carry China's water on TikTok. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) has also accused TikTok's opponents of racism, telling NBC News last week that "xenophobia around China" was behind the GOP's push to ban the app. "And so the idea that, 'Oh, TikTok is the boogeyman—it's just part of a political fearmongering that's happening," Bowman added. Just hours before the Democrat made those comments, a Wall Street Journal report showed that TikTok's data tracking technology was found within 30 state government websites across the United States.
Data from those sites, American intelligence officials have warned, could eventually end up in Beijing's hands. That's because China's national intelligence law requires Chinese companies to turn over data when asked and prohibits those companies from disclosing when they do so. TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is based in Beijing and maintains an internal CCP committee. Chew acknowledged Thursday that TikTok shares American user data with ByteDance but refused to say whether ByteDance could be forced to give data to Beijing.
"Under [People's Republic of China] law, all Chinese companies, including TikTok, whose parent company is based in Beijing, are ultimately required to do the bidding of Chinese intelligence services, should they be called upon to do so," Sens. John Thune (R., S.D.) and Mark Warner (D., Va.) said in a Thursday statement. "Nothing we heard from Mr. Chew today assuaged those concerns."
Published under: CCP , China , Democrats , Mark Pocan , TikTok
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and
Government Accountability Institute President Peter
Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in
Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York
Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe
Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before
Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the
Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after
the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s
other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism.
Video: China May Have Had More Deals With The Biden Family Than We Thought
As many as ELEVEN more.
In this short video clip from Fox News, Maria Bartiromo asks James Comer, the House Committee Oversight Chair, about the Biden crime family’s lucrative deals with China — as many as eleven separate ones.
Check out the jaw-dropping corruption below:
Reader Interactions
Silicon Commies: Tim Cook Praises Apple’s ‘Symbiotic’ Relationship with China
Apple CEO Tim Cook praised his company’s “symbiotic relationship” with China during his first visit to the communist country since the Chinese coronavirus pandemic plagued the world.
“We could not be more excited. Apple and China — grew together and so this has been a symbiotic kind of relationship,” Cook said at the China Development Forum in Beijing, according to a report by Financial Times.
The China Development Forum is the communist regime’s version of Davos, which is a gathering of the world’s elites who are trying to plan the lives of everyone else on the planet.
Cook added that this year, Apple would celebrate its 30th anniversary in China, which makes the vast majority of the company’s iPhones.
“We have a very large supply chain operation in China and then of course we also have our — Apple stores,” Cook said. “From the moment we hit the ground yesterday, we couldn’t wait to see some of our customers so we went to the Sanliutn store [in Beijing].”
The Apple CEO’s visit to China on Friday was also reportedly covered by the communist regime’s state media. Cook was one of several U.S. CEOs in Beijing for what has been advertised as an opening-up party after three years of strict policies regarding the Wuhan virus.
The severe coronavirus-related policies had a major impact on supply chains in China, making 2022 one of Apple’s toughest years in the communist country, resulting in the company’s quarterly revenue in the three months to end-December to fall for the first time in three and a half years.
As Breitbart News previously reported, Cook signed a $275 billion deal with China in 2016 in order to prevent a crackdown by the communist government on its vast business in the country.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
Josh Hawley Unveils ‘Worker’s Agenda’ to End U.S. Free Trade with China
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has unveiled his “worker’s agenda,” which includes legislation to end the United States’ decades-long, job-killing free trade status with China.
Last week, Hawley proposed the “Ending Normal Trade Relations with China Act” which would effectively impose high tariffs on Chinese imports to the U.S. by revoking China’s free trade status that the communist country has enjoyed for more than two decades.
“As we face a new age of competition with China, we need an agenda in Washington that will make our working class strong and independent,” Hawley said in a statement:
We can start by revoking the sweetheart deal D.C. elites handed to China 23 years ago — end normal trade relations, put in place strong tariffs, and protect American workers. [Emphasis added]
In 2001, China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) with the backing of former President Bush’s administration and was subsequently awarded “permanent normal trade relations status” by the U.S. after congressional approval.
Democrat Rep. Sherman: China’s Control of Corporate America an ‘Invasion of our Sovereignty’:
As a result of authorizing U.S. free trade with China, nearly four million American jobs have been eliminated from the U.S. economy from 2001 to 2018 — including almost three million domestic manufacturing jobs, as multinational corporations readily shipped jobs overseas without penalties from the government.
During that same period, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.
“It is time for Congress to remedy the past mistake of granting China [most favored nation] status,” Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) CEO Michael Stumo said in a statement:
China did not — as supporters of granting China [most favored nation] wrongly predicted — become more open, democratic, and free market oriented. Instead, the [Communist Chinese Party] used autocratic state planning strategies, forced labor, intellectual property theft, and illegal trade activity to weaken the U.S. economy, absorb Hong Kong, threaten Taiwan, and become America’s biggest geopolitical threat. We look forward to working with Democrats and Republicans to pass legislation that revokes China’s Most Favored Nation status, recognizes the folly of eliminating most tariffs under the guise of ‘rules-based trade’ for non-market economies, and imposes higher tariffs on Chinese goods that are made with forced labor and subsidized by the [Communist Chinese Party]. [Emphasis added]
Stumo has also endorsed legislation from Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Budd (R-NC), Rick Scott (R-FL), and J.D. Vance (R-OH) that would likewise end China’s free trade status. Instead, presidential administrations would choose whether or not to authorize such status for China.
Earlier this month, Scott Paul with the Alliance for American Manufacturing urged Congress to end China’s free trade status to further prevent hollowing out the nation’s working and middle class.
While skyrocketing U.S. trade deficits have led to devastation across working and middle class communities over the last two decades, tariffs would be a boon for reshoring jobs and boosting wages, studies show.
A recent study from CPA economists finds that tariffs on nearly all foreign imports would create about 10 million American jobs while boosting domestic output.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
BANKSTER JANET YELLEN PROTECTS BIDEN FOREIGN MONEY TRANSFERS FROM THEIR FOREIGN PAYMASTERS
KID GLOVE TREATMENT': Johnson slams Bidens' 'troubling financial transactions'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG3zZQOVd1Y
THE GAMER LAWYER AT WORK
CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINKS
Bidens don't seem to 'cover their tracks' in alleged China money web: Curley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQkbnOO-mbM
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the
Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) and the
Obama (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) book and television deals.
Then there is the Biden family (THE CHINESE - BIDEN -
PENN INSTITUTE) (THREE GAMER LAWYERS) corruption,
followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by
the Warren (GAMER LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter
Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in
Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of
government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA
HARRIS AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE
BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, LAWYER CHUCK SCHUMER).
According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
Biden Blunder: ‘I Applaud China for Stepping Up’
“Today, I applaud China for stepping up,” President Joe Biden accidentally said in a speech in Canada on Friday, adding another public gaffe to his legacy of public speaking miscues that have gone viral on social media.
“Excuse me. I applaud Canada,” Biden then said, prompting laughs from the members of the Ottawa parliament.
Biden had been addressing Canada’s immigration policies, The New York Post explains:
“The US leader made the error while discussing how Canada’s government agreed to accept more migrants from Latin American countries — immediately after not mentioning China at all while discussing fentanyl, which is driving a surge in US overdose deaths.”
“You can tell what I’m thinking about China,” Biden added. “I won’t get into that, yet.”
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the
Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) and the
Obama (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) book and television deals.
Then there is the Biden family (THE CHINESE - BIDEN -
PENN INSTITUTE) (THREE GAMER LAWYERS) corruption,
followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by
the Warren (GAMER LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter
Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in
Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of
government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA
HARRIS AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE
BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, LAWYER CHUCK SCHUMER).
According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
The Group the Chinese Communists Fear the Most
I have rarely heard it mentioned in the mainstream media, but, according to reports, during the 1990s in communist China, thirty thousand members of Falun Gong were rounded up and executed. The founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, fled China and now lives in the U.S., while in China members of the order went underground. According to Freedom House, "Falun Gong practitioners across China have since [July 1999] been subjected to widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, horrific torture, and extrajudicial killing — abuses which continue today." Nonetheless, there are still some 100 million practitioners worldwide, and the movement continues to grow.
Information concerning the repression of Falun Gong is a Chinese state secret, with severe penalties for anyone attempting to obtain data. As the Falun Data Infocenter puts it: "The CCP has also used political and financial influence around the world to either keep journalists silent, or drive false narratives about Falun Gong." With total control inside China and compliance by foreign journalists, the Chinese Communist Party has driven a false narrative that minimizes the number of Falun Gong practitioners and hides data on the number of those abducted, tortured, killed, and killed for their organs, thus totally obscuring the record. At the same time, Chinese and foreign media continue to suggest that the victim is the abuser: the false idea that Falun Gong is a cult with dangerous potential.
For anyone who has studied the history of or practiced Falun Gong, the enormity of this continuing abuse and misinformation is obvious. Falun gong is a benign practice of meditation, exercise, and moral instruction with no political ties of any sort, but it is often represented, even by well-meaning Western journalists, as a "cult" or as a right-wing anti-CCP organization, as in a recent article in the Guardian, relying heavily on statements by Media Matters. According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
If those journalists would do their homework, beginning with studying Falun Gong websites and the book Zhuan Falun by Li Hongzhi, instead of relying on the well funded Chinese "zero out" campaign, they would realize that Falun Gong is an uplifting instruction based on traditional, conservative Chinese practices.
The story of the Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong is a classic example of totalitarian intolerance of competing ideas, and it involves both propaganda and physical terror. A careful examination of the record proves that the response of the communist Chinese regime is not very different from that of ancient regimes toward their own enslaved peoples. Despite their vast power, totalitarian leaders are fearful and at times even paranoid, as was Stalin, and the flip-side of fear is repression.
In reality, Falun Gong is a complex spiritual practice involving qijong-like exercises, positive thinking, and moral belief based on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. As a practitioner myself, I know how Falun Gong can transform an individual from illness to health, confusion to knowledge, and intolerance to open-mindedness. It is obvious to me how a totalitarian regime would view Falun Gong as a threat, as indeed it would be to any form of deceit, corruption, or intolerance. As Falun Gong spread in China during the 1990s, at one point with 60 to 100 million followers in China alone, the practice became a threat to a government that had once encouraged it as a healthy "money-saving" vehicle and a social safety valve for a dissatisfied citizenry. Yet within months, beginning in July 1999, perhaps 100,000 followers were arrested and 30,000 executed. Even now, nearly 4,000 practitioners were arrested in 2021 (latest figures).
It is critical to consider the magnitude of this repression, with between two and four million Falun Gong followers "detained" in forced labor camps between 2000 and 2008 alone. Chinese policy toward Falun Gong is similar to the more widely publicized repression of Uyghurs, 1.5 million of whom have reportedly been detained in China, with hundreds of thousands of others subjected to forced sterilization, forced abortion, and religious suppression, and with the razing or damaging of 16,000 mosques. Like totalitarian regimes of the past, the CCP appears willing to employ the most ruthless tactics in order to secure its hold on the country.
Though Falun Gong is not a political movement, the exponential growth of Falun Gong during the 1990s might well have pressured authorities to change, and as soon as China's leaders recognized this threat, they suppressed Falun Gong with a heavy hand. One could hardly be truthful, compassionate, and forbearing and lend one's support to a communist regime governed by a few thousand members of the political elite intent on benefiting from their rule at the expense of the general population. Falun Gong teaches a form of gentleness and goodness that threatens the lies and violence of any totalitarian government.
One must ask: if the Chinese communists are willing to imprison millions of ethnic and religious minorities and to murder tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, what are they capable of in the future? How many lives are they willing to expend in a takeover of Taiwan? And once Taiwan is taken, how many Taiwanese will they imprison and execute? In the event of a war with Japan or with the United States, how many are they willing to see die, on both sides? And if Chinese communism were ever to achieve world domination, what kind of future could we expect? As Christians, probably something not unlike what the Uyghurs and Falun Gong have already experienced.
At the same time, the specter of Chinese repression should open our eyes to the remarkable value of our own system of democratic capitalism. The CCP has diminished Falun Gong in China, but, like all religious and spiritual practices, Falun Gong has found a safe home in America, at least in principle, though the Biden administration continues to restrict religious practice, to challenge religious rights in the courts and in agency practices, and to unleash the power of agencies like the Justice Department and IRS against the open practice of religion. Many of the same tactics adopted in communist China are accepted by progressives in our own country, including the encouragement of birth control and abortion, even late-term abortion and infanticide after birth.
For the present, there is still a difference between totalitarianism and democracy as practiced in the USA. Now is a time when American citizens, media, government, and corporations need to see clearly that communist China is a totalitarian government and to recognize what it is capable of. China's record toward Falun Gong, a violent repression that continues today, is one element in a string of crackdowns and arrests. We do not need to send a balloon over China to understand the nature of their regime, but we do need to recognize the enormity of its abuses and take appropriate actions to defend ourselves.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Image: tookapic via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
‘Everybody’s dropping like flies’: Federal ‘tranq’ warning follows escalating concerns in Mass
The flesh-eating drug taking over America | 7NEWS
Lawmaker Tells Why It's So Hard To Stop Fentanyl In California | Tom Umberg
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/11/democrat-controlled-sanctuary-city-of.html
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at. MONICA SHOWALTER
Fentanyl's scourge plainly visible on streets of Los Angeles
- 8
In a filthy alley behind a Los Angeles doughnut shop, Ryan Smith convulsed in the grips of a fentanyl high — lurching from moments of slumber to bouts of violent shivering on a warm summer day.
When Brandice Josey, another homeless addict, bent down and blew a puff of fentanyl smoke his way in an act of charity, Smith sat up and slowly opened his lip to inhale the vapor as if it was the cure to his problems.
Smith, wearing a grimy yellow T-shirt that said "Good Vibes Only," reclined on his backpack and dozed the rest of the afternoon on the asphalt, unperturbed by the stench of rotting food and human waste that permeated the air.
For too many people strung out on the drug, the sleep that follows a fentanyl hit is permanent. The highly addictive and potentially lethal drug has become a scourge across America and is taking a toll on the growing number of people living on the streets of Los Angeles.
Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in the city from April 2020 to March 2021, a 56% increase from the previous year, according to a report released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Overdose was the leading cause of death, killing more than 700.
Fentanyl was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer. Use of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is cheap to produce and is often sold as is or laced in other drugs, has exploded. Because it's 50 times more potent than heroin, even a small dose can be fatal.
It has quickly become the deadliest drug in the nation, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Two-thirds of the 107,000 overdose deaths in 2021 were attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The drug's toll spreads far beyond the streets.
Jennifer Catano, 27, has the names of two children tattooed on her wrists, but she hasn't seen them for several years. They live with her mother.
"My mom doesn't think it's a good idea because she thinks it's gonna hurt the kids because I'm not ready to get rehabilitated," Catano said.
She has overdosed three times and been through rehab seven or eight times.
"It's scary to get off of it," she said. "The withdrawals are really bad."
Catano wandered around a subway station near MacArthur Park desperate to sell a bottle of Downy fabric softener and a Coleman camping chair she stole from a nearby store.
Drug abuse can be a cause or symptom of homelessness. Both can also intersect with mental illness.
A 2019 report by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority found about a quarter of all homeless adults in Los Angeles County had mental illnesses and 14% had a substance use disorder. That analysis only counted people who had a permanent or long-term severe condition. Taking a broader interpretation of the same data, the Los Angeles Times found about 51% had mental illnesses and 46% had substance use disorders.
Billions of dollars are being spent to alleviate homelessness in California but treatment is not always funded.
A controversial bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom could improve that by forcing people suffering from severe mental illness into treatment. But they need to be diagnosed with a certain disorder such as schizophrenia and addiction alone doesn't qualify.
Help is available but it is outpaced by the magnitude of misery on the streets.
Rita Richardson, a field supervisor with LA Door, a city addiction-prevention program that works with people convicted of misdemeanors, hands out socks, water, condoms, snacks, clean needles and flyers at the same hotspots Monday through Friday. She hopes the consistency of her visits will encourage people to get help.
"Then hopefully the light bulb comes on. It might not happen this year. It might not happen next year. It might take several years," said Richardson, a former homeless addict. "My goal is to take them from the dark to the light."
Parts of Los Angeles have become scenes of desperation with men and women sprawled on sidewalks, curled up on benches and collapsed in squalid alleys. Some huddle up smoking the drug, others inject it.
Armando Rivera, 33, blew out white puffs to attract addicts in the alley where Smith was sleeping. He needed to sell some dope to buy more. Those without enough money to support their habit, hovered around him, hoping for a free hit. Rivera showed no mercy.
Catano couldn't sell the chair, but eventually she sold the fabric softener to a street vendor for $5.
It was enough money for another high.
As a result of countless stories like this, Los Angeles County leaders came together on Tuesday to announce the creation of a working group to address the fentanyl crisis "through prevention, education and enforcement."
The group consists of local law enforcement, District Attorney George GascĂłn and Los Angeles Unified School District officials, who will work to develop strategies that can fight the crisis head on.
"This is the number one killer of people between 18 and 45 years of age," said Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore, who said that it's time to go after suppliers of the drugs. "The prosecution of these individuals must be at the highest level."
THE FENTANYL COMES OVER THE OPEN BORDER FROM JOE BIDEN'S CRONIES IN RED CHINA THEN THROUGH NARCOMEX
Ryan Smith, a 36-year-old homeless addict, falls asleep after smoking fentanyl in Los Angeles, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in the city from April 2020 to March 2021, a 56% increase from the previous year, according to a report released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Overdose was the leading cause of death, killing more than 700. Jae C. Hong / AP
A NATION IN MELTDOWN AS DEMOCRATS FLOOD THE COUNTRY FROM BORDER TO OPEN BORDER WITH ILLEGALS
THIS IS WHAT THE GLOBALIST NAFTA DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS DONE TO ONE SANCTUARY CITY
I Went To Every Single Homeless Camp In Los Angeles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vc6CHRrtH8
Fentanyl's scourge plainly visible on streets of Los Angeles
CBS Los Angeles - Yesterday 11:04 PM
In a filthy alley behind a Los Angeles doughnut shop, Ryan Smith convulsed in the grips of a fentanyl high — lurching from moments of slumber to bouts of violent shivering on a warm summer day.
When Brandice Josey, another homeless addict, bent down and blew a puff of fentanyl smoke his way in an act of charity, Smith sat up and slowly opened his lip to inhale the vapor as if it was the cure to his problems.
Smith, wearing a grimy yellow T-shirt that said "Good Vibes Only," reclined on his backpack and dozed the rest of the afternoon on the asphalt, unperturbed by the stench of rotting food and human waste that permeated the air.
For too many people strung out on the drug, the sleep that follows a fentanyl hit is permanent. The highly addictive and potentially lethal drug has become a scourge across America and is taking a toll on the growing number of people living on the streets of Los Angeles.
Ryan Smith, a 36-year-old homeless addict, falls asleep after smoking fentanyl in Los Angeles, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in the city from April 2020 to March 2021, a 56% increase from the previous year, according to a report released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Overdose was the leading cause of death, killing more than 700. Jae C. Hong / AP© Provided by CBS Los Angeles
Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in the city from April 2020 to March 2021, a 56% increase from the previous year, according to a report released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Overdose was the leading cause of death, killing more than 700.
Fentanyl was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer. Use of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is cheap to produce and is often sold as is or laced in other drugs, has exploded. Because it's 50 times more potent than heroin, even a small dose can be fatal.
It has quickly become the deadliest drug in the nation, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Two-thirds of the 107,000 overdose deaths in 2021 were attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The drug's toll spreads far beyond the streets.
Jennifer Catano, 27, has the names of two children tattooed on her wrists, but she hasn't seen them for several years. They live with her mother.
"My mom doesn't think it's a good idea because she thinks it's gonna hurt the kids because I'm not ready to get rehabilitated," Catano said.
Related video: Addressing the rise of fentanyl overdose
Rep. Gimenez: U.S. Must 'Decouple' From China Because 'We Are Feeding This Dragon'
(CNSNews.com) - As she often does, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer a question at Wednesday's press briefing, this one about Chinese President Xi telling Russian President Putin that "change is coming that hasn't happened in 100 years" and "we are driving this change together."
"What do you think that means?" Fox News's Peter Doocy asked Jean-Pierre:
"You would have to ask them," she responded.
On Thursday morning, Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) -- a member of the new House select committee on China -- said he has no doubt what Xi meant:
"Change is coming means that China will become the dominant economic and military power in the world, and so that change is not going to good for the United States. That's a pretty easy answer," he said.
Gimenez said the U.S. must "decouple" from China because "we are feeding this dragon."
"We've made this dragon what it is, and we need to put this dragon on a diet in order for them to feel the squeeze and also to stop funding the build-up, the unprecedented military buildup that China is doing in order to supplant the United States as the dominant economic and military power of the world.
"Now, Russia is going to be used as one of China's pawns in this...They used to be the major partner with China. Now they're the minor partner, and Putin has to do what XI says or else, you know, he's not going to buy his oil and his gas and not fund the war in Ukraine and other things that Putin wants to do.
"And so, yeah, it's pretty easy for me to answer that question. The change is, China is going to be dominant, we're not."
Gimenez said the U.S. should "incentivize" American companies to come back to the United States -- or at least to our own hemisphere:
"There's plenty of good, cheap labor down in South America," he said.
"We need to look at our neighbors to the south as a solution to this problem of the supply chain. And, unfortunately, we have been looking to the Far East for that. We need to come back home.
"And, again, put this dragon on a diet, because it's needed, and we can't continue to feed the dragon that eventually is going to gobble us up. And we need to face that, and we need to face it right now."
Gimenez noted that the U.S., by making China a trading partner and introducing capitalism into the communist system, acted in the belief that we could change China:
"Yeah, they changed all right. We made them stronger," Giminez said:
"We made the Chinese Communist Party stronger. Politically they haven't changed at all. They are persecuting their own people. They are committing genocide. Unfortunately, American companies have, you know, made excuses for them.
"It's time that stops. It's time for these companies to come back to America."
NSC Spokesman John Kirby: ‘In Some Cases, We Have Significant Concerns About China’s Behavior’
(CNSNews.com) - The Biden administration has “significant concerns” in some cases about China’s behavior when it comes to abiding by the international rules of the road, NSC spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are meeting on Tuesday in Moscow.
Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy asked, “Quickly about the meeting today, the Xi-Putin meeting. In November when President Biden met with Xi, he said, I want to make sure that every country abides by the international rules of the road. Does he think China is abiding by the international rules of the road?”
KIRBY: In some cases, we have significant concerns about China’s behavior, particularly their coercive and aggressive behavior for instance in the South China Sea and pursuing false maritime claims, concerns about intellectual theft, and some trade practices, and the president’s been very open and honest about that, and he was when they met in Bali, but there are other areas where we believe there’s room for cooperation with China, and we want to be able to pursue that too, but in order to do that, Peter, you got to keep those lines of communication open.
You gotta have that ability to talk particularly when things are tense like they are right now, and that’s what the president wants to get back to.
Doocy asked about the COVID-19 Origin Act of 202 (S.618), which Biden signed on Monday.
The president said in a statement:
Today, I am pleased to sign into law S. 619, the “COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023.” I share the Congress’s goal of releasing as much information as possible about the origin of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID–19). In 2021, I directed the Intelligence Community to use every tool at its disposal to investigate the origin of COVID-19, and that work is ongoing. We need to get to the bottom of COVID-19’s origins to help ensure we can better prevent future pandemics. My Administration will continue to review all classified information relating to COVID–19’s origins, including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In implementing this legislation, my Administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security.
“About the bill President Biden signed yesterday, he says he will declassify COVID origins intel except info that would harm national security. Is there a bigger national security threat than something that killed 1.1 million people in this country?” Doocy asked.
KIRBY: I’ve seen some of the commentary on your network about this. The president obviously has to balance transparency with national security, Peter. Of course he does. When coming into office, ordered the declassification of what the DNI had on COVID origins, ordered the entire intelligence community and added the Department of Energy to that list–
DOOCY: Where is it?
KIRBY: Let me finish my answer.
DOOCY: We’re talking about the beginning of his term.
KIRBY: Added the Department of Energy and national labs, told them to keep studying it. We have kept Congress informed. Some of that has to be in a classified way right now, but it’s always a balance between the public’s right to know, right - not need, right - and our obligation to protect national security.
So one should not read into that statement that he’s sort of laying a foundation here to be overly secretive. He believes strongly that we’ve got to find the roots and the origins of COVID so that we can prevent a future pandemic, and through his actions, just judging him on what he’s done, through his actions, he’s proven that he’s going to be as transparent as possible with the American people, because he believes that’s important.
DOOCY: Does the White House hope that the lab leak theory is not true?
KIRBY: We don’t have a hope one way or the other, Peter. What we want is the ground truth, wherever that takes us, wherever the science takes you, wherever the facts takes you. President Biden wants to know so that he can help work with the scientific community to prevent a future pandemic. We’re not– there’s no thumb on the scale here, Peter. It’s not about not wanting a certain outcome. We just want the best possible outcome that we can get.
The annual death toll from fentanyl poisoning among Americans now equals the annual death toll of American soldiers in World War II. But Biden has made no effort to deter the Chinese from poisoning Americans citizens by, for example, ending the subsidies we provide to their economy or revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status (PERPETRATED BY DIANNE FEINSTEIN), or closing all the Confucius Institutes in our universities set up to steal our technologies. From the Chinese Communist point of view, this alone would be worth the tens of millions of dollars they have poured into the Bidens’ pockets. DAVID HOROWITZ
For starters, let's define the "fentanyl crises" for what it really is: Chemical warfare, effectively perpetrated on the American people by the Chinese communist government and their Mexican-cartel allies. This administration's open border, which is clearly an intentional policy, marks Biden and Harris as co-conspirators in what's arguably the CCP's chemical-weapons assault on U.S. citizens. RICHARD MORSE
Democrats Focus on Woke Grievances During TikTok Hearing, Not National Security
While most lawmakers focused on TikTok’s ties to communist China at today’s hearing with its CEO, Shou Zi Chew, Congresswomen Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) focused on what, for them, appeared to be a more important priority: stopping algorithms from becoming racist.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee called the hearing amid widespread concerns on Capitol Hill that TikTok, the product of Chinese company ByteDance, represents a national security risk to the United States.
While committee member Rep. Matsui briefly acknowledged the China issue, the bulk of her remarks focused on woke grievances about racist algorithms.
“Make no mistake, the Chinese government represents a real and immediate threat. Look no further than the vulnerable gear still in our telecom networks that still needs to be ripped and replaced.”
“But we can’t lose sight of the important internet governance issues TikTok and other social media companies represent. I’m especially committed to demanding transparency from large platforms about the algorithms that shape our online interactions, especially for teenagers and young users.”
“And that’s why I introduced the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act, to bring greater visibility into this ecosystem. My bill would prohibit algorithms that discriminate on the basis of race, age, gender, ability, and other protected characteristics.”
“This bill would require online platforms to publish annual public reports detailing their content moderation practices, which I believe should be a baseline requirement to establish meaningful oversight and consumer choice.”
The bill, which Rep. Matsui co-sponsored with far-left Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), would create an inter-agency task force consisting of the FTC, Department of Education, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Commerce, and Department of Justice, to investigate “discriminatory algorithmic processes.”
Rep. Matsui also advanced a common talking point used by the post-2016 online censorship machine: that social media is responsible for fueling “political extremism.”
“Over the past few years, alarming information brought to light by whistleblowers have shown that social media companies are intimately aware of the effect their products have on young women, political extremism, and more. Despite this, they withheld those studies or declined to investigate further. In either case, it shows a pattern of evasive or negligent behavior that I find concerning or extreme.”
Speaking later in the hearing, New York congresswoman Rep. Yvette Clarke expressed similar woke concerns.
“The problems of social media platforms’ content moderation, algorithmic discrimination and safety are neither new nor unique to TikTok.”
“I share the concerns raised by my colleague, Congresswoman Matsui, related to algorithms. I believe that without mitigation against bias, platforms will continue to replicate, exacerbate discrimination that is illegal under civil rights law, as well as exclude important dialogue about sensitive topics like race from occurring on the platform.”
Rep. Clarke went on to ask the TikTok CEO whether he agreed that there should be transparency requirements for social media platforms to “identify whether policies have a disparate impact on communities that are protected classes, like race, religion, national origin, or gender.”
“It is vital that the diverse culture of the United States is represented online,” said Clarke, alsostating that social media platforms like TikTok need to do better at removing “hate speech” and “domestic terrorism” — a label increasingly applied by Democrats to Trump supporters.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
McCarthy: Biden’s Policies Have Brought Us Bank Problems, Inflation, High Interest Rates – and China’s New Axis of Power
“We’ve gained a lot of different problems” since Pres. Joe Biden took office, and his weak leadership has even made the world less safe, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) says.
Democrats’ excessive government spending leads to inflation, which drives up interest rates, imperiling banks, McCarthy explained Wednesday in an interview on Fox Business:
“The reason we have a bank problem is because the Democrats spent $5.9 trillion, brought us inflation.
“With inflation, interest rates go up, banks come into problems.”
….
“We’re paying more for gasoline, because of his energy policy.”
“We’ve got more Americans dying because of fentanyl, because of his open-border,” Speaker McCarthy added.
Biden’s weak leadership has also emboldened China to forge a dangerous new alliance with America’s other enemies, McCarthy warned:
“Now, we’ve got China thinking they’re able to do something with President Xi that hasn’t happened in a hundred years. They’re bringing Saudi Arabia and Iran together. He’s sitting with Russia.
“He’s now creating the new Axis of Power, something we haven’t seen since the 1930’s, with Iran, North Korea, China and Russia.
“Why? Because we’ve got a weak leader in the White House, and we’re seeing it in every aspect. When America’s not strong, the rest of the world is not safe.”
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Doesn’t Deny Biden Family China Payout After Joe Biden Did
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday did not deny Biden family members received a collective $1.3 million payout from a CCP-linked entity after President Joe Biden denied the payout.
Joe Biden falsely claimed Friday his family members did not receive a $1.3 million cut funneled through a $3 million dollar wire transfer to Biden family business associate Robinson Walker — a cut even Hunter Biden’s acknowledged was true.
“House Oversight says they’ve got bank records showing a Chinese energy company paying three Biden family members through a third party. What were they paid for?” Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked Jean-Pierre.
Jean-Pierre replied by dodging the question without denying the payments were received by the Biden family members.
“Look, I’m — I’m just not going to respond to that from here,” she said. “And I don’t even where to begin to even answer that question because, again, it’s been lies and lies and inaccuracy for the past couple years.”
“And I’m just not going to get into it from here,” she said.
After the briefing, the House Oversight Committee slammed Jean-Pierre for not knowing “even where to begin to even answer that question.”
“She can start here with bank records showing a Chinese energy company paying Biden family members $1 million through a third party,” the committee tweeted the evidence:
The press conference comes after House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) on Tuesday asked Jean-Pierre to correct Joe Biden’s false denial of his family’s receipt of the China payout.
“Despite the overwhelming evidence, President Joe Biden continues to deny his family’s involvement in suspicious foreign financial transactions,” Comer wrote. “President Biden’s statement was misleading and dishonest,” Comer said, reminding the White House the committee “received the bank documents from a financial institution pursuant to a subpoena.”
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a ten percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
RELATED: CNN’s Burnett–New Biden Family Payment Evidence ‘Doesn’t Look Good’
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.</i
How the Biden Admin Helped a Public University Partner With a CCP-Controlled School
Biden's National Science Foundation funds University of Virginia partnership with military-tied Tsinghua University
The Biden administration is using taxpayer cash to fund a University of Virginia climate change partnership with a Chinese Communist Party-controlled school that conducts research for China's military.
President Joe Biden's National Science Foundation last year awarded more than $130,000 to the University of Virginia to conduct climate change research with Beijing-based Tsinghua University, federal spending disclosures show. Tsinghua University, which counts Chinese president Xi Jinping among its alumni, will work with University of Virginia researchers to chart the global "transition to a low-carbon economy," according to the grant description.
Tsinghua University is funded by China's Ministry of Education and maintains a "CCP Committee" that keeps the school "in accordance with President Xi's hopes." It also holds "secret-level security credentials" for classified military research, trains students for China's nuclear weapons program, and has allegedly carried out cyberattacks for the Chinese government, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. It is also one of several Chinese universities under the supervision of the communist nation's State Administration of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, a CCP agency that works to deepen university involvement in the defense sector.
The National Science Foundation's decision to fund the partnership with Tsinghua calls into question the foundation's vetting process as it enjoys a record-high budget. The bipartisan CHIPS Act, which Biden said would help "counter China," authorized $80 billion in funding for the National Science Foundation to invest in research and development. But in the case of its University of Virginia grant, the foundation found working with the Chinese on climate change "worthy of support."
For American Foreign Policy Council fellow Michael Sobolik, the foundation's decision to use "taxpayer money to facilitate research cooperation with a People's Liberation Army-affiliated university" is "questionable at best."
"We've seen time and again how the CCP leverages people-to-people ties to further its malign influence within the United States," Sobolik told the Washington Free Beacon. "When you're in the midst of a cold war, you can't play both sides of the ledger. The sooner we accept that reality, the better."
The National Science Foundation downplayed Tsinghua's role in the project, with research security strategy and policy chief Rebecca Keiser saying the Chinese school's involvement stems from "researcher-to-researcher collaboration."
The foundation "has instituted a first-in-government analytics process to identify research security concerns and ensure transparency when assessing proposals and awards to ensure that any international collaboration provides mutual benefit," Keiser said in a statement. "In any international research collaboration, [the National Science Foundation] only funds the U.S. side."
The grant, which started in October and runs through 2026, funds University of Virginia research into "the transition to a low-carbon economy." Tsinghua and a second Chinese partner, the China University of Petroleum-Beijing, will conduct similar research in China, the results of which "will be used to develop a U.S.-Chinese collaborative course on climate leadership skills." That collaboration, the grant says, "will lead to better strategies for lowering emissions in the United States that are complementary to those in China." China is by far the biggest polluter in the world—in 2019, it emitted more greenhouse gases than all developed nations combined.
This is not the first time the University of Virginia has partnered with Tsinghua. The two schools are exchange partners, and the University of Virginia's engineering department in 2017 developed a "teaching collaboration" with Tsinghua that saw students from both schools pair up for homework assignments. That project, however, does not appear to have received federal money. Beyond the October grant, the National Science Foundation has only funded projects linked to Tsinghua on two other occasions—once under Biden last June and once under former president Barack Obama in April 2011. Both of those grants, which went to Boston University and Drexel University, respectively, funded academic workshops that included participants from Tsinghua.
A University of Virginia spokesman defended the university's work with Tsinghua, arguing that because the project "does not involve critical technologies or military applications," it does not compromise U.S. national security interests.
"An important part of researching global challenges like climate change is working with institutions around the world to compare the effects of a warming climate and the efficacy of different proposed solutions," university spokesman Brian Coy said. "As part of those efforts, we take seriously our responsibility to operate within all U.S. laws and regulations regarding the protection of intellectual property and U.S. national security interests."
"Our university collaborates closely and transparently with federal regulatory and law enforcement partners in order to ensure our collaborative research efforts contribute to human understanding of global challenges without compromising our interests as a nation," Coy said.
The university's partnership with Tsinghua could attract scrutiny from Republican Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin. "Since being elected, the governor has taken steps to protect Virginians from the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party," Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez told the Free Beacon. "Through his TikTok ban on all state devices and networks, prohibiting foreign adversaries, including China, from acquiring the commonwealth's agricultural land, requesting Fairfax County schools cut ties with CCP-linked entities, and preventing a Trojan horse deal for a CCP-linked battery manufacturer to produce electric vehicle batteries propped up by U.S. tax incentives, the governor has made it clear that there is no room in Virginia for the Chinese Communist Party."
National Science Foundation director Sethuraman Panchanathan, who serves at the pleasure of the president, in 2014 was put on the foundation's National Science Board by Obama. Then-president Donald Trump in June 2020 went on to elevate Panchanathan to foundation director. Biden has appointed 10 of the National Science Board's 24 members.
While the National Science Foundation's grant did not send federal money directly to Tsinghua, the Chinese university has received money from American actors in the past. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—one of America's largest liberal nonprofits—gave Tsinghua more than $1.5 million in 2021, the Free Beacon reported in January.
Published under: Biden Administration , CCP , China , Climate Change , Glenn Youngkin , National Security , Science , Universities , Virginia
Members of Congress will question TikTok’s chief executive at a hearing this morning. My colleague Lauren Jackson explains the stakes in today’s newsletter. — David Leonhardt |
Good morning. U.S. officials say TikTok is a national security risk. They’re trying to turn it into their advantage. |
|
An American edge |
The platforms are so powerful, their names are verbs: Google, Uber, Instagram, Netflix. |
For years, the dominance of American tech companies has brought economic benefits to the United States. It has also offered an advantage in a less obvious area — national security. |
Tech companies gather incredible amounts of data about their users. They know where we travel, who our friends are and what we watch. Governments want to use this data for surveillance, law enforcement and espionage. So they hack, hoard, steal and buy it. For years, the U.S. has had an edge over other countries. With court approval, the government can demand that social media giants, based in the U.S. and subject to U.S. law, hand over data about users. |
“We had this advantage that we thought would just go on forever,” Bruce Schneier, a security expert and Harvard fellow, said. |
Then TikTok came along. The social media app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has more than a billion users. TikTok says that includes about 150 million Americans. Under China’s authoritarian state, the government has sweeping control over tech companies and their data. U.S. officials are worried that China will use TikTok to promote its interests and gather Americans’ personal information. One Republican called it a “spy balloon in your phone.” |
TikTok is the latest flashpoint in the two countries’ struggle for supremacy. Last week, TikTok said U.S. officials had given its Chinese ownership two options: Sell the app or risk a nationwide ban. This morning, lawmakers will question TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Chew, about the app’s ties to China. |
Today, I will explain the fight over TikTok and how the U.S. is trying to use the app to its advantage. |
The concerns |
This fight is ostensibly about data: who controls it and determines how it appears on TikTok. The U.S. has two main reasons for concern. |
First is the threat of Chinese espionage. BuzzFeed found that ByteDance engineers in China had accessed American users’ private data. ByteDance also admitted that employees, including two based in China, spied on journalists and obtained their IP addresses, but said that company leaders had not signed off and that the employees were fired. Despite ByteDance’s close ties to China, TikTok has denied that it has given data to the government. |
Second, ByteDance could use TikTok’s algorithms to influence Americans. TikTok has been accused of censoring videos about politically sensitive subjects for China, like Tibetan independence and the Tiananmen Square massacre. |
“A Chinese company owns what has become America’s number one culture maker right now,” Sapna Maheshwari, a Times reporter who covers TikTok, said. In the future, lawmakers say, it’s easy to imagine how China could use TikTok to shape American attitudes about Taiwan — or an American presidential campaign. |
The U.S. is escalating efforts to limit TikTok’s power. The federal government and more than half of the states have banned TikTok from government devices and networks. Britain, Canada and Belgium have done the same. India banned the app entirely. Now the U.S. is threatening a nationwide ban, too. |
How likely is a ban? |
Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020, but judges rejected his attempt. The government is trying again, though it’s unclear exactly how a ban would be implemented. There is no precedent for U.S. restrictions on an app this big. |
One approach that some lawmakers prefer would remove TikTok from Apple’s and Google’s app stores and make the app nonfunctional on U.S. cellphone networks. But the government couldn’t reach into users’ phones to delete the app. TikTok would still be accessible to those who already have it, though users couldn’t download updates to the app, which would probably render it unusable eventually. |
Any ban faces legal and political hurdles, including questions about First Amendment protections and the possibility of angering millions of TikTok users heading into a presidential election year. |
The U.S. may be threatening a ban to force another outcome in its favor — the sale of TikTok to an American company. TikTok and the U.S. have previously negotiated about one. Still, the path is murky. China is unlikely to approve a sale. And if it did, it’s unclear who would buy the app, which could cost $50 billion, according to some analysts. A sale could also trigger antitrust concerns for probable suitors like Microsoft. |
The power of a threat |
Even if a ban never happens, the threat of one still matters. The Biden administration is using the specter of further restrictions to communicate a hard line on China. Lawmakers in both parties will likely make that point clear in the hearing today. |
The episode is the latest in the larger fight between two world powers competing for dominance. In this contest, data is a valuable source of economic and political clout. |
“If you can control data, you can have influence,” Joseph Nye, a political scientist, said. |
China has known this for years. The country has banned apps like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and operated a tightly controlled internet, isolating its citizens from the rest of the world. The U.S. is now threatening to use China’s playbook against it, effectively using private companies as a national asset and limiting information access as a form of sanctioning. |
Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, is expected to tell Congress today that the app is a vehicle for promoting soft power — a “lens through which the rest of the world can experience American culture.” But the U.S. has made clear it cares more about the hard power of data. |
“TikTok is the first platform to truly compete with these huge American tech companies,” Sapna said. “The signal the government is sending is: Don’t bother.” In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Chinese Spyware App TikTok Collects Data From More Than Two-Dozen State Governments, Review FindsMarch 21, 2023 Websites for more than two-dozen state governments use a web-tracking code made by the parent company of TikTok, a Chinese spyware app, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. "Web-tracking pixels" made by ByteDance Ltd., TikTok's parent company, were present in 30 U.S. state government websites across 27 states, a review by Feroot Security found. Some of those states had already banned the app from "state networks and devices," the Journal noted. Website administrators "use such pixels to help measure the effectiveness of advertising they have purchased on TikTok." The pixels, however, "can be watching and recording you when you're renewing your driver's license, paying your taxes, or filling out doctors' forms," Feroot Security's CEO told the Journal. Evidence has shown for years that ByteDance spies on American citizens. The company used TikTok to track the physical locations of Forbes journalists and obtain the data of a former BuzzFeed reporter, a Financial Times reporter, and people connected to the reporters, Forbes reported in December. As a Chinese company, ByteDance shares data with the country's Communist government. After widespread criticism, President Joe Biden, who has long pursued a cozy relationship with TikTok, in February agreed to ban the app from government devices. One month later, TikTok retained a Democratic public relations firm whose founding partner is a top Biden adviser, the Free Beacon reported. Though ByteDance's tracking pixels are ostensibly for advertising, they "can sometimes be configured to collect data that users enter on websites, such as usernames, addresses, and other sensitive information," the Journal reported. The Journal itself was able to find the pixels on government websites from Maryland and Utah, both of which had banned TikTok from state-owned devices and networks. Both states removed the pixels after the Journal reached out. Feroot found tracking pixels from other Chinese-owned companies, as well as Russian-owned companies, on state government websites. While a bill aimed at restricting TikTok is making its way through Congress, critics say the legislation "will let the Biden administration avoid taking real action" against the app, the Free Beacon reported. And even a national TikTok ban, the Journal wrote, "wouldn't address many of these data-collection concerns." Published under: Biden Administration , CCP , China , Espionage , Internet , TikTok Comer Says Biden Is Lying About Family's Chinese Cash Payments'It's rich that the president just stood there and lied to the American people,' says House Oversight chairmanMarch 22, 2023 House Oversight chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) on Tuesday called on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to "issue a correction" after President Joe Biden denied that his family received a payout of more than $1 million from a CCP-backed energy company. "It's rich that the president just stood there and lied to the American people," Comer told Fox News. "It's also rich that the mainstream media hasn't called him out on it." Earlier this month, when asked about the payments to his family, Biden said to a reporter, "That’s not true." Hunter Biden’s legal team, however, confirmed the payments from the Chinese energy company, according to a letter from Comer to the press secretary. "The Committee is concerned about the national security implications of a President’s or Vice President’s immediate family members receiving such lucrative financial deals from foreign nationals and foreign companies without any oversight," the letter reads. Comer's comment comes as the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability ramps up its investigation of the Biden family's foreign business dealings. Bank records obtained by the committee revealed that "State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to Robinson Walker, LLC.," which then sent over $1.3 million to three Biden family members. "We're going to get the truth out," Comer told Fox News. "[T]he mainstream media is not going to be able to let him stand up there and lie to the American people about the fact that his family's taken millions and millions of dollars from our adversary." Published under: Biden Administration , China , Hunter Biden , James Comer , Joe Biden Think Tank Executive Provided ‘Explosive’ Info to FBI About Hunter Biden’s Chinese Deals, Lawyer ClaimsMarch 22, 2023 An Israeli think tank executive claims he told the FBI in 2019 that members of the Biden family warned a Chinese energy executive about a coming federal investigation, allowing him to flee the country before being placed under arrest. Gal Luft, the co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington-based foreign policy think tank, provided the "explosive" details to the FBI and Justice Department in March 2019, according to his lawyer. Sources close to Luft told the Jewish News Service members of the Biden family "tipped…off" their Chinese partner, China Energy Fund Committee chairman Ye Jianming, that he was the target of an FBI probe. The details emerge as House Republicans have homed in on the Biden family’s dealings with CEFC China, and amid an ongoing Justice Department probe of the troubled first son. Republicans released a report last week that a close friend of the Biden family, Rob Walker, wired millions of dollars from a CEFC-linked company in 2017 to Hunter Biden, his uncle Jim Biden, and his sister-in-law, Hallie Biden. The timing of Luft’s incendiary claims are certain to draw scrutiny. He came forward with allegations about the Bidens last month after the Justice Department sought his extradition from Cyprus on charges of illegal arms trafficking. Luft denies the charges and alleges that the "DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim & Hunter Biden." While Luft’s specific allegations have yet to be verified, there is evidence that he has direct insight into CEFC’s affairs. There is also reason to believe that he met with the FBI and Justice Department as he claims. His lawyer, former U.S. assistant attorney Robert Henoch, said in filings to the Justice Department under penalty of perjury that he accompanied Luft during his 2019 meeting with FBI and Justice Department officials. Henoch has called Luft a "whistleblower" and said he planned to submit letters to Congress with details of Luft’s case and his meeting with investigators. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Luft served as an adviser to CEFC China Energy during the same time span that the energy conglomerate paid millions of dollars to the Biden family for business consulting and legal services. CEFC, which is widely suspected to be a front for the Chinese Communist Party, paid Luft’s think tank $350,000 to collaborate on events to promote China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project. Ye, the chairman of CEFC, served on the board of trustees for the institute, which included former high-level intelligence officials like ex-CIA director James Woolsey and Robert McFarlane, a national security adviser for former president Ronald Reagan. Luft and Biden worked closely with Patrick Ho, the head of CEFC’s think tank, the China Energy Fund Committee. A former employee of that think tank, David Riccardi-Zhu, told the Free Beacon that he frequently saw Ho with Luft and Woolsey, who served under former president Bill Clinton. Ho organized several events for Luft and his think tank to promote the Belt and Road Initiative and various clean energy initiatives. CEFC China hired Hunter Biden in November 2017 to represent Ho after his arrest on charges that he tried to bribe African officials on behalf of CEFC. Biden, who received $1 million for the legal work, appeared to suspect that Ho worked for Chinese intelligence. In May 2018, Biden referred to Ho as the "fucking spy chief of China" in a voice recording. Emails from Biden’s laptop show that he spoke to FBI agents about Ho after his arrest in November 2017. CEFC China, which first approached Biden in 2015, also paid the first son and his uncle, Jim, around $5 million for consulting projects. While Biden appears not to have inked any major business deals for the energy conglomerate, he developed a close relationship with Ye, who gave Biden an $80,000 diamond during a meeting in New York City. Biden associates have said they believe CEFC targeted Biden as part of an intelligence-gathering operation for the Chinese government. In an additional layer of intrigue, Hunter Biden claimed in an October 2017 text message to be an attorney for Ye Jianming, according to a November 2020 Senate report. Biden wrote in 2017 that he had signed an attorney-client agreement with Ye, and that he was helping the businessman "on a number of his personal issues" including "staff visas and some more sensitive things." Luft’s fate remains to be seen. His attorneys have called on Israeli authorities to intervene in Cyprus to block his extradition to the United States. Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said this month that he is investigating Luft’s claims and has been in contacts with his lawyers. Comer’s office did not respond to questions about the status of those negotiations or whether Luft has shared the new information with congressional investigators. Luft alleges that federal agents have not contacted him since his initial meeting in 2019. That would make him at least the second potential Biden witness to claim that investigators have ignored information about the Bidens’ dealings with CEFC China. Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter Biden associate, has said that he provided FBI officials with information about the Bidens in October 2020 but has not had any follow-up meetings. Bobulinski has released text messages which show that he met with Hunter, Jim, and Joe Biden in May 2017 to discuss CEFC. This contradicts President Biden’s claims that he had no knowledge of his son’s business activities. The Justice Department and FBI did not respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Biden did not respond to requests for comment. Published under: CCP , China , FBI , Feature , Hunter Biden , Laptop Comer had previously been stone-walled for two years by the corrupt and incompetent Biden Treasury head, Janet Yellen. PROFILE OF A SOCIOPATH GAMER LAWYER: JOE BIDEN is known as a serial liar, a "public servant" who has somehow managed to accrue tremendous wealth, a race-baiting opportunist, a Catholic-in-name-only, and a bought-and-paid-for politician in bed with criminal cartels and foreign foes. In another era, Joe Biden would have been run out of his country much the same way Benedict Arnold was two and a half centuries ago; in an era when integrity, honor, fortitude, fidelity, and grit have been jettisoned for immorality, unscrupulousness, weakness, betrayal, and craven pliability, however, he is elevated to king sleazeball in a city drowning in sleaze. JB SKURK The annual death toll from fentanyl poisoning among Americans now equals the annual death toll of American soldiers in World War II. But Biden has made no effort to deter the Chinese from poisoning Americans citizens by, for example, ending the subsidies we provide to their economy or revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status, or closing all the Confucius Institutes in our universities set up to steal our technologies. From the Chinese Communist point of view, this alone would be worth the tens of millions of dollars they have poured into the Bidens’ pockets. I take Comer at his word that the Biden camp assumed the bank records would never come to light. They know what kind of money is involved, and they must realize how toxic this could become. GuiltyOf foul deeds.To purchase your copy of David Horowitz’s new bestseller ‘Final Battle: The Next Election Could Be the Last’, CLICK HERE. “Guilty as Hell, Free as a Bird, America’s a Great Country.” Last week another shoe dropped on the Biden crime family. James Comer, chairman of the committee investigating the most disturbing scandal in the history of the White House finally received the records from a bank – one of twelve – that the Bidens have used to stash their payoffs from China’s Communist dictatorship. Comer had previously been stone-walled for two years by the corrupt and incompetent Biden Treasury head, Janet Yellen. This first Biden bank record to be surrendered showed that three members of the Biden family including Beau Biden’s widow Hallie and one person identified only as “Biden” received payments amounting to $1 million from a Chinese Communist State energy company. What were the payments for? Forget asking the Bidens who have a long history of silence and denial on such material questions. When asked, Joe Biden denied that he ever even discussed Hunter Biden’s Chinese business affairs with him, even though he flew with Hunter on Air Force Two to China and met with his business associates. Never at a loss for brazen lies to extricate himself from difficult circumstances, Biden without a second thought denied that the bank records were “true.” To date there hasn’t been one attempt by the Biden camp to try to explain what service the Bidens actually supplied to the Chinese Communists to earn such ample rewards. At the lowest levels of this corruption, Hallie Biden, who is a school counselor, received $25,000 from the Chinese Communist Party. For what? When you have no answers to such material questions, when you lie continually about the operations themselves (“I never discussed Hunter’s business with my son!,”) when you suborn your intelligence services to carry out an elaborate and expensive effort to suppress the story of an incriminating laptop, and do it right before a presidential election, you are in fact telling us that you are guilty of the obvious crime you are covering up. In this case, treason. Colluding with an enemy power to hurt your own country. Consider the simple fact that though pieces of this story have become objects of public concern over the last half dozen years, the Biden camp has constructed no narrative to provide a plausible explanation of these extraordinary payoffs from the Chinese Communist dictatorship; in other words to provide an alternative explanation to the apparent one of personal greed and national betrayal. I ask readers to put themselves in the position of the president. You are taking massive payments from a government that deliberately sent millions of its subjects from the Wuhan center of a deadly pandemic to countries around the world to celebrate the Lunar New Year. This criminal action resulted in the deaths of 9 million people globally, including a million Americans. You then backed this same criminal dictatorship’s efforts to cover up its origins in a Chinese Communist military lab which was running “gain of function”research paid for by your government on the deadly virus at the heart of the pandemic. At the same time, the dictatorship from which you were receiving payments making your family rich beyond its wildest dreams was organizing alliances with America’s deadly enemies, Russia and Iran. And thanks to your deliberate destruction of America’s southern border, which effectively put its control in the hands of Mexico’s drug cartels, you created a new mortal threat to the safety of American citizens in the form of a new drug – fentanyl – which is produced by the Chinese Communists and distributed to Americans by the Mexicans. The annual death toll from fentanyl poisoning among Americans now equals the annual death toll of American soldiers in World War II. But Biden has made no effort to deter the Chinese from poisoning Americans citizens by, for example, ending the subsidies we provide to their economy or revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status, or closing all the Confucius Institutes in our universities set up to steal our technologies. From the Chinese Communist point of view, this alone would be worth the tens of millions of dollars they have poured into the Bidens’ pockets. Yet, as a president elected by less than .03% of the popular vote Biden seems to feel no vulnerability on this front – not enough to cook up a rudimentary alibi. Either Biden is so influenced by the radicals in the Democrat Party who hate America that he – or the people guiding him are ready to collude in its destruction in the name of a progressive future. Or perhaps he has been so insulated from the consequences of his destructive policies by a corrupt and kept media that he and his influencers have convinced themselves that they can get away with anything. Whichever the case, rest assured that there are limits to how willing Americans may be to remain silent in the face of their destruction. A day of reckoning is coming. David HorowitzDavid Horowitz is founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the bestselling author of several books, including Radical Son, The Black Book Of The American Left, Dark Agenda: The War To Destroy Christian America, and I Can’t Breathe: How A Racial Hoax Is Killing America. Reader InteractionsMost underreported story: Evidence of the Biden family’s $ millions from China now documented with bank records
It comes as no surprise that the propaganda arm of the Democrats called the “mainstream media” has no interest in informing the American people of the gravity of the evidence piling up that Joe Biden has been bought off by the Chinese Communist Party. Thanks to the efforts of James Comer, we already have bank records of $1 million flowing to Biden family members through a cutout named Rob Walker, shortly after Biden left office as VP. There is no indication of any particular services performed for this treasure, nor is there any expertise among the recipients, who include the current POTUS’s son Hunter, his brother James, Hunter’s mistress-at-the time Hallie Biden (who is also his brother’s widow and Biden’s daughter-in-law) and an entity simply named “Biden.” Rep. Comer, appearing on Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures program on Fox News, said that this is “only the beginning.” There are “as many as 11 other deals” that are being examined by his committee. YouTube screengrab Comer emphasizes that his investigation is of Joe Biden, not his family. The family members are intermediaries (my term) in the flow of money from Beijing-controlled entities to Biden entities. The key moment came six and a half minutes into the interview that is embedded below.
Needless to say, if Trump or any Republican officeholder were similarly found to have received major funding via family members from our principal adversary, and had a history of softness toward that adversary, an interview like Comer’s would lead every television newscast and would be on the front pages of most newspapers. The word “treason” would be a major feature of the conversations Americans would hear on cable news. But the media silence won’t stop the flow of records, and won’t stop the depositions and testimony to come. I take Comer at his word that the Biden camp assumed the bank records would never come to light. They know what kind of money is involved, and they must realize how toxic this could become. Whether or not the case of Alvin Bragg against Trump is an attempted distraction – a very successful one so far – doesn’t really matter. An enemy funding a president with millions of dollars is a story that can’t be contained. Here is the full interview: JOE BIDEN HAS NEVER OPENED HIS FAT MOUTH THAT HE WASN'T LYING FOR SUCKING BRIBES! In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. GOP House Opens Probe into Biden Family for Potential Tax Evasion, Money Laundering, Human Trafficking Violations
Members of the newly controlled Republican House on Thursday announced an investigation into the Biden family business and whether President Joe Biden is compromised by the family’s business schemes. Rep. James Comer (R-TN), the top Republican on the Oversight Committee, announced during a press conference that the Biden family will be investigated for the following violations: 1. Conspiracy or defrauding the United States 2. Wire fraud 3. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud 4. Violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act 5. Violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act 7. Violations of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 8. Tax evasion 9. Money laundering 10. Conspiracy to commit money laundering “I want to be clear, this is an investigation of Joe Biden,” Comer stated. “The Biden family’s business dealings implicate a wide range of criminality from human trafficking to potential violations of the constitution.” “In the 218th Congress, this committee will evaluate the status of Joe Biden’s relationship with his families foreign partners and whether he is a president who is compromised or swayed by foreign dollars or influence,” he said.
“We are also sending letters to the Biden administration and Biden family associates renewing our request for voluntary production of documents relevant to this investigation,” Comer continued before stating Joe Biden lied about having knowledge about his family’s business dealings. “This is an investigation of Joe Biden, the president of the United States, and why he lied to the American people about his knowledge and participation in his family’s international business dealing schemes,” Comer said. “National security interests require to conduct an investigation and we will pursue all avenues – avenues that have long been ignored.” Comer then listed a number of crimes that members of the Biden family may have committed, according to uncovered evidence by House Republicans. “These include conspiracy or defrauding the United States, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, tax evasion, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit money laundering,” Comer said. Comer added that additional evidence suggests the Biden family tried to aid the Chinese’s purchase of American assets. “We find evidence that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden were involved in a scheme to try to get China to buy liquified natural gas,” Comer said. “People are in outrage over China buying farmland in the Dakotas. What about China starting to buy into our American energy industry?” Joe Biden and his staff have claimed at least seven times that the president has not been involved in the family business, yet more than 17 pieces of evidence suggest Joe Biden has played an influential role in his son Hunter and brother James’s activities. Fifty-eight percent of voters believe that Joe Biden has played a role in his family’s business dealings. Sixty percent say Hunter Biden has sold “influence and access” to the president. Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. I’d be inclined to disagree with Don except for one thing: Biden has proven to be a very adept criminal mastermind. For decades, he has funneled millions of dollars to his children and siblings and, especially, to his debauched, deviant son, Hunter. ANDREA WIDBURG There it is. That's the issue. To begin, you have the corrupt family Biden. They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty years. The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars. How is this possible on his salary? It's not. So where did his wealth come from? Not from being a brilliant businessman. DAVID PRENTICE PROFILE OF A SOCIOPATH GAMER LAWYER: JOE BIDEN is known as a serial liar, a "public servant" who has somehow managed to accrue tremendous wealth, a race-baiting opportunist, a Catholic-in-name-only, and a bought-and-paid-for politician in bed with criminal cartels and foreign foes. In another era, Joe Biden would have been run out of his country much the same way Benedict Arnold was two and a half centuries ago; in an era when integrity, honor, fortitude, fidelity, and grit have been jettisoned for immorality, unscrupulousness, weakness, betrayal, and craven pliability, however, he is elevated to king sleazeball in a city drowning in sleaze. JB SKURK Instead, the Biden family name has really stood for only two things: buffoonery and corruption. For fifty years, Joe Biden has managed to hold onto some slice of power in D.C. as a senator, vice president, and Oval Office stooge not because he is renowned for his erudition or virtue but rather because his doltish behavior and venal character make him ideal for others to control. Perhaps no other Washington relic has accomplished so little for the American people over such a prolonged government career or managed to harness those defects for lucrative advancement more successfully than China Joe. Biden, long known as Delaware’s “senator from DuPont,” Biden served on committees that were most sensitive to the interests of the ruling class, including the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. He supported the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a milestone in the deregulation of the banks, and other right-wing measures. After nearly four decades in the Senate, Biden became Obama’s vice president, helping to oversee the massive bailout of Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent restructuring of class relations to benefit the rich. That included the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, based on a 50 percent cut in the pay of all newly hired autoworkers. ‘Not True’ — Joe Biden Contradicts Hunter’s Confession of China Payout
2:59 President Joe Biden contradicted Hunter Biden’s confession the family business received payments in 2017 out of China. “That’s not true,” Joe Biden protested to reporters Friday when questioned about recent revelations the family’s bank accounts were enriched with funds from communist China. Despite Joe Biden’s claims, Hunter admitted on Thursday the family business did accept China money in 2017. Hunter not only admitted the Biden family business received China money, but he also acknowledged he, along with James, Hailie, and unknown “Biden,” all received $1.3 million collectively. “Hunter received his portion of good faith seed funds which he shared with his uncle, James Biden, and Hallie Biden, with whom he was involved with at the time, and sharing expenses,” Hunter’s spokesperson acknowledged. The White House on Friday refused to respond to a request for comment when Breitbart News inquired whether Joe Biden still believed Hunter did not receive China cash, as he previously said. Joe Biden’s denial comes after House Oversight Committee James Comer’s (R-KY) revelation on Tuesday the Biden family business received a $3 million wire transfer from a Chinese energy company and subsequent payments after President Joe Biden left the vice presidency in 2017. Comer has also found evidence that shows the Biden family business received $179,836.86 while Joe Biden was in the White House while he was Vice president in 2015. Although the sum appears to be insignificant compared to the $31 million received by the business during Joe Biden’s time as vice president, the new amount builds upon the previous reporting in 2022 by Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer. In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a ten percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. ‘Debunked,’ ‘Phony,’ ‘Wild’: Establishment Media Continue Defending Biden Family Business Scandal
3:43 The establishment media have continued to defend the Biden family business schemes from House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer’s (R-KY) probe, calling the findings “debunked,” “phony,” and “wild.” Comer’s investigation, launched in November, has begun to yield results. This week, Comer revealed the Biden family business received a $3 million wire transfer and subsequent payments from a Chinese energy company between 2015 and 2017 upon receiving Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) from the Treasury and subpoenaed records from Bank of America. The $3 million payment was in turn split between four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — from State Energy HK Limited. The family members received $1.3 million collectively. Comer has also caused Hunter to finally admit he made money from China. He had previously denied the evidence provided by the New York Post’s “laptop from hell” reporting by Emma-Jo Morris, as well as reporting by Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer. But the establishment media has defended against and diminished Comer’s investigation, claiming it’s a Republican “obsession” and consists of “conspiracies and made-up scandals.” The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin has claimed the whole investigation was already debunked as a “fantastical conspiracy theory … Obviously, there is no legitimate basis for congressional ‘oversight’ of the matter,” Rubin claimed:
The New York Times’s Ana Marie Cox, a political reporter and columnist, insisted the investigation is as “wild” as the “accusations against” Hunter and the family. “Of course, cheating on your taxes and lying on a form are nothing compared with the operatic tale of corruption at the highest levels spun out by Tucker Carlson et al,” she said. “All Republicans want to do is conjure the clingy atmosphere of deviousness that Hillary Clinton never escaped,” Cox added before noting Hunter will never be scathed. “Hunter Biden has endured considerable scrutiny, but he has advantages that most people don’t: No matter what happens, he is unlikely to find himself destitute or without opportunities,” she said. Vanity Fair’s Caleb Ecarma even downplayed the “suspicious” activity reports as “not necessarily indicative of criminal activity.” “Tens of thousands of general suspicious activity reports are filed every year,” he wrote, despite the 154 billion transactions processed in 2022 by commercial automated clearinghouses. U.S. banks have flagged over 150 SARs from Hunter and James Biden that included “large” amounts of money flagged for further review. According to a 2020 Senate report, SARs “often contain evidence of potential criminal activities, such as money laundering and fraud.” Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Fact Check: Joe Biden Falsely Claimed Hunter Never Made Millions
2:32 CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed in a 2020 debate with former President Donald Trump that his “son has not made money from China.” VERDICT: False. Hunter and the Biden family business made millions in 2017 from Chinese business deals. According to Hunter’s statement on Thursday, Hunter not only admitted the Biden family business received China money but that Hunter, James, and Hailie Biden all received China funds. According to the House Oversight Committee this week, an unknown “Biden” — along with Hunter, James, and Hallie — all received $1.3 million collectively. “Hunter received his portion of good faith seed funds which he shared with his uncle, James Biden, and Hallie Biden, with whom he was involved with at the time, and sharing expenses,” Hunter’s spokesperson admitted. Joe Biden and his team have claimed at least seven times Joe Biden has not been involved in the family business. At least 18 pieces of evidence suggest otherwise. “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings. Here’s what I know — I know Trump deserves to be investigated,” Joe Biden claimed in 2019. Breitbart News requested comment from the White House about Hunter’s acknowledgment of the China funds and whether Joe Biden still believes Hunter did not receive China cash, as Joe Biden once denied. The White House did not respond. Breitbart News also requested comment about whether the president still stands by his statement that he has never spoken to Hunter about the Biden family business, even though congressional whistleblowers claim Joe Biden indirectly benefited financially from the Biden family business, raising questions about whether Joe Biden is written into the family’s business deals off the books, such as the deal where a Biden family associate mentioned Joe Biden as the “big guy” who would receive 10 percent, The White House did not respond to the request for comment. Concerning the unknown “Biden” who received payments from China, the White House did not respond to a request for comment about who the unknown “Biden” might be or if the “Biden” was Joe Biden. Breitbart News also questioned the White House if Joe Biden’s aides still stood by their claims that Joe Biden has not been involved in the family’s business. Again, Breitbart News received no response. Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Anybody else repelled by the legal juggernaut against Trump just as revelations roll out about the Bidens?
These days, we are learning about just how corrupt and criminal a sitting president can be, what with "the big guy" taking his cut of millions of dollars of cash from China's government-linked firms like a mafia don, as greedy famiglia members gathered around for the spoils. According to the New York Post:
Those are the House revelations coming out now about Joe Biden and his family's activities around influence-peddling with China, which was far from the only country they were in such "business" with. That's what the House committee investigating this is currently rolling out, as the media yawn, the prosecutors refuse to touch this, and nothing is expected to be done about it. It's also far from the only corruption associated with House Biden. There also have been revelations about classified documents found on Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop and sales of those classified documents done through rewritten "consultant" reports. There was a report of the Bidens sharing an office at Sweden House in Washington D.C. with office keys issued for Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden, Hunter -- and a communist party-linked Chinese official. All about "business" of course, although the only product being sold was Biden's office. They didn't actually make stuff. Nobody prosecuted there. But wait: There is a crime! They've finally got what they claim is proof of hush money paid by President Trump back in 2016 and they're going to make a "historic first" arrest:
That's what passes for "crime" among these guys, even as far bigger crimes involving the unprecedented sale of public office for millions of dollars bring no fear of legal consequences for House Biden. The irony and cynicism this picture invokes is amazing. Justice has now been reduced to Getting Trump, in this case, for paying off a whore to keep quiet about whatever it was they were doing together in his long ago so he could run for president. At the same time, the House is revealing that Joe Biden and virtually all his relatives acted like a mafia, peddling influence, consorting with America's enemies, living like kings without any visible source of income, and kicking back cash to "the Big Guy." What's wrong with this picture? Trump is the one who needs to go to jail here? Yes, he shouldn't have been associating with a filthy porn star like Stormy Daniels, particularly since he was married to the beautiful Melania -- dumb, dumb, dumb. Yes, he shouldn't have been involved in even trying to repress the story of his fling with Daniels, which didn't sound much like sex actually, given that he'd endured far more damaging revelations, from his self-own attack on John McCain, to Melania Trump's softcore porn pictures in her long ago, without so much as a political scratch on him. None of these things had any impact on voters' willingness to vote for him given that they could see that Trump was a fighter -- for them -- and they were hungry for that. The voters already knew what they were getting with Trump and they were saying 'yes,' so one more crappy story about some crummy people he'd associated with in the past would have been an utter nothingburger he should not have worried about. But bad judgment is not a crime the way taking cash from China in exchange for doing what it wanted and then not disclosing it, is. That's called bribery and treason, the real kind. Meanwhile, the prosecutor's case against Trump looks flimsy. Details about whether Trump really knew about the piddly hush money payment point to an acquittal -- Trump never signed the hush-money agreement, which is why Daniels felt free to not hush, though that didn't stop her from taking the hush money anyway, being a whore. Trump's sleazy fixer (pity he couldn't get anyone better), Michael Cohen, testified that he couldn't get Trump on the phone to even tell him that he paid the hush money, and all he could do was get an intermediary to say she'd tell him, and who knows if she did? That too, could exonerate Trump as instigating or even knowing about this. We know that Trump might have benefited from the hush money paid had Stormy done what she was paid to do, but there's no evidence that Trump launched or even knew about this stupid caper. In any case, it was piddly stuff, it wasn't stolen money and it wasn't government money here, it was just a foolish episode of private money badly spent to repress an unimportant news story. That stinks not just in proportion to the Biden revelations, it stinks compared to the other level of repression of news we have thus far seen: Where's the prosecution of the FBI, Twitter, Facebook, the intelligence honchos, the Democrats and all the other illegally acting actors who conspired together repressed the very valid New York Post story of Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop and all the revelations it contained? Once again, it's only bad if Trump tries to repress a story with private money and we should pay no attention to the democracy-threatening specter of the government itself acting in naked violation of the First Amendment to repress a far bigger story with no fear of consequences. That's the real scandal. What's coming out now not presents a twisted distortion of judicial priorities, rendering the whole thing a 'witch hunt' as Trump claims, you can bet that this oddly prioritized pursuit of 'justice' is sure to be noticed by the American voters. Trump has called for large demonstrations by the public should he be arrested and you can bet he will get them. (The chief risk here is that the government will seed provocateurs in the large groups, which the Trump team should be ready for.) What we have here is nothing but the giggly prosecutors long-held wet dream of Getting Trump, putting him in handcuffs, parading him in a perp walk, and releasing a mugshot, claiming they're treating him no differently from any other criminal in this age of Soros-backed D.A.s Letting Muggers Go. The hypocrisy piled upon hypocrisies is astounding. One can only hope that it backfires, badly, onto them as it effectively rallies the public to Trump. Two-tiered justice is repellent upon a targeted political opponent and the public is not going to miss this. I know that that was the dynamic with many voters in the 2016 election -- they voted for Trump not because they particularly wanted him but because the establishment's reaction was so virulent and unfair. There's a reason for this too -- they can see that it's not only a bid to Get Trump, it' a message to the voters that any one of them could be treated just as capriciously and unfairly by a left-wing juggernaut exercising power illegitimately through politicized justice. That will be what drives the public to rallying around Trump. One can only hope it backfires on these miscreants worse than it ever did and this is their last mistake. Image: Screen shot from Natasha Owens video, via YouTube
Hallie Biden Took Big Check From Chinese Energy Company While She Was Dating Hunter
March 16, 2023 President Joe Biden's daughter-in-law Hallie Biden received $35,000 in payments from a Chinese energy company while she was dating her late husband's brother, Hunter Biden, the New York Post reported on Thursday. House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) disclosed the transaction in a memo to committee members, according to the Post. News of the previously unknown payment comes as the committee has been investigating whether members of Biden's family were running an influence-peddling operation with the president's knowledge. Comer said earlier this week that the probe, which has focused on Biden's son Hunter's foreign business dealings, could ensnare six or seven members of his family. The committee reportedly discovered the payment to Hallie Biden while examining suspicious activity reports this week from the Treasury Department, which flag potentially illegal transactions. There are reportedly over 150 reports related to Hunter and James Biden. The transaction reportedly took place in March 2017, after a company called Chinese State Energy HK Limited—an affiliate of another Chinese energy company that Hunter Biden worked with—sent a $3 million wire transfer to a company owned by an associate of the Biden family. Over $1 million of those funds were reportedly disbursed to Biden family members, including Hallie. Hallie Biden, the widow of President Biden's oldest son Beau, was in a romantic relationship with Hunter Biden at the time of the transaction. The two started an affair while Hunter was married to his first wife, Kathleen, and continued until 2019. Hunter has been accused of using his proximity and influence with his father to land lucrative positions on the board of Ukrainian oil company Burisma, a Chinese energy company, and a Chinese private equity firm. Comer told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Wednesday that he believes there are "probably six or seven Biden family members that were involved in various business schemes around the world." Other Biden family members, including the president’s brother James, have also been accused of leveraging Biden’s positions to pull in business. Published under: Hunter Biden , Joe Biden Oversight Committee Discovers Unreported Funds Biden Family Business Received While Joe Biden Was VP
5:48 Biden family business associate Robinson Walker received $179,836.86 on November 5, 2015, while President Joe Biden was vice president, a previously unreported sum the House Oversight Committee revealed Thursday. Although the sum appears to be insignificant to the $31 million received by the business during Joe Biden’s reign as vice president, the new amount builds upon the previous reporting in 2022 by Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer. Thursday’s revelation comes after the committee revealed the Biden family business received a $3 million wire transfer from a Chinese entity and subsequent payments after President Joe Biden left the vice presidency in 2017. It is unknown who sent the $179,836.86 sum to Biden family business associate Robinson Walker, an individual who, three days later on November 9, 2015, used his personal checking account to send a wire to a bank account for “Robert [Hunter] Biden” in the amount of $59,900 (one-third of the total payment) the committee’s investigation has found. Days prior, that same sum amount had been transferred to Walker’s personal checking accounts from the business account. The $59,900 payment is also the same amount sent in 2017 to European Energy and Infrastructure Group (EEIG) in Abu Dhabi, a company associated with James Gilliar, a second associate of the Biden family business. In 2010, Gilliar founded EEIG, claiming to offer “strategic influences at the highest level within Washington, D.C.,” according to the firm’s website. Notably, Gilliar was a part of the CEFC Energy Co. deal in which Joe Biden (“Big Guy”) would receive a ten percent equity stake in the joint venture with Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski. Gilliar was also instrumental in drumming up many business propositions for CEFC to acquire. In a 55-page business proposal dated February 22, 2016, it appears Gilliar proposed CEFC buy the American Westinghouse Electric Company for $5 billion. In an email dated May 14, 2017, Gilliar emailed Bobulinski, Hunter, James Biden, and Walker about a second proposed business deal whereby CEFC would acquire an energy company in Oman. The 41-page proposal suggested future acquisition targets in Columbia and Romania. Hunter had some experience in Romania. Hunter began working for Romanian Gabriel Popoviciu in the spring of 2015. According to Hunter’s calendar, he met with Joe Biden three times from July 2015 to March 2016 about helping Popoviciu with a “conviction stemming from his purchase of a 550-acre parcel of government-owned land for a steep discount,” the New York Post reported. The meetings, in addition to whistleblowers, contradict Joe Biden’s claims that he has no knowledge of the family’s business deals. “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings. Here’s what I know — I know Trump deserves to be investigated,” Joe Biden claimed in 2019. “My son has not made money from China. The only guy who has made money from China was this guy,” Joe Biden claimed in a 2020 debate with former President Donald Trump. It was not the first time Joe Biden conducted family business meetings in the White House as vice president. Joe Biden met with Hunter Biden’s business partner, Eric Schwerin, at the White House 19 times as vice president, according to a new report. Schwerin is expected to soon provide banking documents to the Oversight Committee. Moreover, Joe Biden reportedly met at the White House with two Chinese energy executives who worked with a Chinese Communist Party-linked company, Wanxiang, on July 25, 2014, between 11 a.m. and 12.15 p.m., emails from Hunter’s laptop reveal. Two years earlier, Seneca Global Advisors, Hunter and Walker’s lobbying business, had a client named GreatPoint Energy that partnered with Wanxiang on a $1.25 billion natural gas plant in communist China. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping was at the signing deal between the two entities. The deal between GreatPoint Energy and Wanxiang is notable because Hunter’s business, Rosemont Seneca Partners, also invested in the Fisker car company that was bought by Wanxiang after Fisker went bankrupt in 2013. In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a ten percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Biden Family Got Over $1M in Chinese Wire PaymentsThe total money transferred adds up to $1,065,692.
The House Oversight Committee is digging into the Biden family business. Its latest revelations raise some interesting questions. The Oversight Committee stated that, “Bank records we’ve obtained reveal Rob Walker, a Biden family associate, used his company to transfer money from a Chinese energy company to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden, and an unknown Biden.”
Officially, State Energy HK Limited exports clothes made for Hugo Boss, DKNY, Polo and other fashion brands, but it describes its actions as being part of China’s Belt initiative. Why would a clothing exporter though need to pay out that kind of money to the Bidens? And then there’s Hailie Biden, Beau Biden’s widow who took up with Hunter. While Hunter and James Biden were in business, wiring money to Hailie suggests an attempt to disguise money going to Hunter or an attempt to bypass him, or a larger business relationship involving the Biden family. Hence the missing 4th Biden.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Reader InteractionsYOU MEAN GAMER PARASITE LAWYER HUNTER BIDEN IS A LIAR???Hunter Biden Admits to Biden Family’s China Deals for $Millions After Years of DenialPollak: Joe Biden Can Be Impeached for Bribery
JOEL B. POLLAK3,285 4:17 News Thursday of payments from a Chinese Communist Party-linked company to members of President Joe Biden’s family amounts to a potential case for bribery, an impeachable offense under the Constitution. The House Oversight Committee revealed that in 2017, China’s State Energy HK Limited sent $3 million to a company controlled by family associate Robert Walker, who in turn distributed funds to members of Biden’s family: his surviving son, Hunter; his brother, James; his daughter-in-law, Hallie; and an unknown “Biden.” State Energy HK Limited was linked to CEFC China Energy, whose chairman, Ye Jianming, did business with Hunter Biden. CEFC was also involved in an abandoned joint venture with the Biden family in which someone referred to as the “big guy,” and presumed to be then-former Vice President Biden, was to have a 10% stake. It is not clear what goods or services, if any, were provided in exchange for these payments. Hunter Biden’s legal team issued a statement, claiming that he had engaged in a “legitimate” private business venture with a Chinese company: “As part of that joint venture, Hunter received his portion of good faith seed funds which he shared with his uncle, James Biden, and Hallie Biden, with whom he was involved with at the time, and sharing expenses.” It was not clear what, exactly, that “joint venture” was, or how it was arranged. Hunter Biden’s overseas business ventures had been recognized as early as 2015 as a potential conflict of interest for his father. Diplomats and journalists questioned Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where he earned $83,333 per month, despite lacking relevant expertise, while his father was in office. Those concerns were brushed aside, however, by the vice president’s office, and the issue was never resolved. Hunter Biden also connected other foreign business associates with his father, including Chinese associates. The criminal statute of bribery describes giving “anything of value” to an official to “influence” him or her in performing any “official act.” The fact that the “thing of value” might have flowed to Biden’s friends and family, rather than to Biden himself, would not absolve him — and there is evidence that the senior Biden benefited from his family’s gains. China’s desire to “influence” is clear; it is less clear what “act” Biden did, or did not do. However, as Democrats reminded us again and again, throughout both Trump impeachment investigations and trials, it is not necessary that a criminal statute be violated for the president to be impeached and removed. Many scholars say that a president can be impeached only for acts committed after taking office. But Democrats undermined that standard — not only by arguing that Trump could be impeached for “emoluments” as soon as he took office, but also by holding a second Senate trial for Trump even after he had left office in 2021. And in this case, it could well be argued that Biden’s foreign policy is an ongoing act affected by past financial benefit. Bribery is one of two acts — the other is treason — mentioned explicitly by the Constitution as impeachable offenses. Prior to Thursday, the evidence existed on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Now, however, evidence has emerged from the U.S. Treasury. The House Oversight Committee should turn its investigation into a full impeachment inquiry, with a congressional vote and all attending subpoena powers. No one is above the law. Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. House Oversight Committee: Beau’s Widow Hallie Is ‘New’ Biden Business Member Who Received China Cash
6:16 Beau Biden’s widow and Hunter’s ex-lover Hallie Biden is the “new” family business member who received a $25,000 cash payment on March 27, 2017, from family associate Robinson Walker’s LLC regarding a Chinese venture, the House Oversight Committee revealed Thursday. Walker, who has described himself as someone who “generally [has] been acting as a surrogate for H[unter] around the country and abroad pursuing opportunities,” received a $3 million payment from State Energy HK Limited, which was divvied up between four Biden family members: Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unknown Biden. According to the committee, Hallie is the new member identified who was previously a mystery. There is still an unknown “Biden” in the bank records. No first name is listed for the fourth Biden. “Hallie is the president’s son’s widow and ex-lover of Hunter. She is also widely reported to be a school counselor. It is unknown why Hallie would receive $25,000 from Walker’s LLC obtained from the family’s Chinese venture with State Energy HK Limited. It is also unknown what services, if any, she rendered for the money,” the committee stated. It is also unclear who the account holder is for the bank account titled simply, “Biden,” according to the committee. It is notable that State Energy HK Limited was named by Comer as an entity funneling money to the Bidens. State Energy HK Limited was under the control of Chinese company CEFC China Energy’s chairman, Ye Jianming, and was affiliated with CEFC. Ye, State Energy HK Limited, and CEFC were closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Hunter made huge money from Ye. In 2017, Hunter earned a $1 million legal retainer from Jianming’s company. He also received a large diamond from Ye worth an estimated $80,000 in February 2017. Since 2018, Ye has been under detention in China on charges of bribery. In 2017, the Biden family had also negotiated a deal with CEFC in which Joe Biden (“Big Guy”) would receive a ten percent equity stake in the joint venture with Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski. Another Hunter Biden business partner, James Gilliar, dubbed Joe Biden the “big guy” in his May 13, 2017, email to Bobulinski, who has confirmed “the big guy” was a reference to Joe Biden. The 2017 email revealed that a business deal between Bobulinski, the Biden family, and high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party would include 10 percent “held by H for the big guy ?” In a memo obtained by Breitbart News, the committee outlined how much of the $3 million flowed from State Energy HK Limited to the Biden family members:
Comer has pledged to unearth China’s financial ties to the Biden family and to ascertain whether Joe Biden is compromised by the Communist Chinese Party “The Oversight Committee is concerned about the national security implications resulting from President Biden’s family receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals,” Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) said about the money funnels. “We will continue to follow the money trail and facts to determine if President Biden is compromised by his family’s business schemes and if there is a national security threat.” In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a ten percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to note Hallie Biden was previously Hunter Biden’s lover, not wife. Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Oversight Committee Discovers Unreported Funds Biden Family Business Received While Joe Biden Was VP
5:48 Biden family business associate Robinson Walker received $179,836.86 on November 5, 2015, while President Joe Biden was vice president, a previously unreported sum the House Oversight Committee revealed Thursday. Although the sum appears to be insignificant to the $31 million received by the business during Joe Biden’s reign as vice president, the new amount builds upon the previous reporting in 2022 by Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer. Thursday’s revelation comes after the committee revealed the Biden family business received a $3 million wire transfer from a Chinese entity and subsequent payments after President Joe Biden left the vice presidency in 2017. It is unknown who sent the $179,836.86 sum to Biden family business associate Robinson Walker, an individual who, three days later on November 9, 2015, used his personal checking account to send a wire to a bank account for “Robert [Hunter] Biden” in the amount of $59,900 (one-third of the total payment) the committee’s investigation has found. Days prior, that same sum amount had been transferred to Walker’s personal checking accounts from the business account. The $59,900 payment is also the same amount sent in 2017 to European Energy and Infrastructure Group (EEIG) in Abu Dhabi, a company associated with James Gilliar, a second associate of the Biden family business. In 2010, Gilliar founded EEIG, claiming to offer “strategic influences at the highest level within Washington, D.C.,” according to the firm’s website. Notably, Gilliar was a part of the CEFC Energy Co. deal in which Joe Biden (“Big Guy”) would receive a ten percent equity stake in the joint venture with Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski. Gilliar was also instrumental in drumming up many business propositions for CEFC to acquire. In a 55-page business proposal dated February 22, 2016, it appears Gilliar proposed CEFC buy the American Westinghouse Electric Company for $5 billion. In an email dated May 14, 2017, Gilliar emailed Bobulinski, Hunter, James Biden, and Walker about a second proposed business deal whereby CEFC would acquire an energy company in Oman. The 41-page proposal suggested future acquisition targets in Columbia and Romania. Hunter had some experience in Romania. Hunter began working for Romanian Gabriel Popoviciu in the spring of 2015. According to Hunter’s calendar, he met with Joe Biden three times from July 2015 to March 2016 about helping Popoviciu with a “conviction stemming from his purchase of a 550-acre parcel of government-owned land for a steep discount,” the New York Post reported. The meetings, in addition to whistleblowers, contradict Joe Biden’s claims that he has no knowledge of the family’s business deals. “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings. Here’s what I know — I know Trump deserves to be investigated,” Joe Biden claimed in 2019. “My son has not made money from China. The only guy who has made money from China was this guy,” Joe Biden claimed in a 2020 debate with former President Donald Trump. It was not the first time Joe Biden conducted family business meetings in the White House as vice president. Joe Biden met with Hunter Biden’s business partner, Eric Schwerin, at the White House 19 times as vice president, according to a new report. Schwerin is expected to soon provide banking documents to the Oversight Committee. Moreover, Joe Biden reportedly met at the White House with two Chinese energy executives who worked with a Chinese Communist Party-linked company, Wanxiang, on July 25, 2014, between 11 a.m. and 12.15 p.m., emails from Hunter’s laptop reveal. Two years earlier, Seneca Global Advisors, Hunter and Walker’s lobbying business, had a client named GreatPoint Energy that partnered with Wanxiang on a $1.25 billion natural gas plant in communist China. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping was at the signing deal between the two entities. The deal between GreatPoint Energy and Wanxiang is notable because Hunter’s business, Rosemont Seneca Partners, also invested in the Fisker car company that was bought by Wanxiang after Fisker went bankrupt in 2013. In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a ten percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Hunter Biden Admits to Biden Family’s China Deals for $Millions After Years of Denial
4:35 Hunter Biden on Thursday admitted and then justified the Biden family’s multi-million dollar business with Chinese entities close to the Chinese Communist Party after years of denial. A spokesperson said:
Hunter’s spokesman continued, “Rep. Comer takes something old and tries to make it new by wrapping it in a wild and baseless right-wing conspiracy … The accounts so dramatically listed by Rep. Comer belonged to Hunter, his uncle and Hallie – nobody else.” Hunter’s statement is a public relations attempt to push back on House Oversight Committee James Comer’s (R-KY) confirmation that the Biden family business received a $3 million wire transfer from a Chinese energy company and subsequent payments afterPresident Joe Biden left the vice presidency in 2017. Comer has also found evidence that shows the Biden family business received $179,836.86 while Joe Biden was in the White House. Although the sum appears to be insignificant compared to the $31 million received by the business during Joe Biden’s time as vice president, the new amount builds upon the previous reporting in 2022 by Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer. Hunter’s statement is notable because it represents the first time he has ever acknowledged his family made millions from Chinese business deals. Schweizer, speaking with Fox News Thursday evening, mocked Hunter for changing his story after years of denial of his accurate reporting:
Schweizer continued:
On Thursday afternoon, the White House also tried to deflect from Comer’s revelations by claiming the family was a victim, despite the millions of dollars they made without showing any production of a product or service in return for the money. “After a disgusting attack lamenting that the President’s deceased son Beau was never prosecuted while he was alive, Congressman Comer has now decided to go after Beau’s widow,” said White House spokesman Ian Sams. The statements come after Comer on Wednesday revealed whistleblowers have informed him Joe Biden has indirectly benefited financially from the Biden family business, raising questions about if Joe Biden is written into the family’s business deals off the books. “One of the things that all of our whistleblowers have told us,” Comer told Just the News, “is that they were all — through these LLCs — paying for things for Joe Biden. So that’s very curious, you know.” . . . In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a ten percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Schweizer: White House Doesn’t Know ‘Full Story’ on Biden Family Dealings, ‘Several’ More Shoes Will Drop
1:17 On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer stated that the explanations for the Biden family’s business dealings in China have been constantly shifting since the story broke in 2018 and that the constant shifts in the story make it “pretty clear that the people spinning the news in the White House don’t know the full story.” Schweizer also said that he believes that there “are going to be several other shoes to drop on this.” Schweizer said, “The story’s changed throughout. When we first broke this story in 2018, they denied that they were even doing business in China. Then they said, well, we were doing business in China but…we didn’t make any money. Then it shifted to, Joe Biden didn’t know about those deals. That’s been disproven. The fact that they keep shifting the stories, I think should be a major concern for people in the White House, because it’s pretty clear that the people spinning the news in the White House don’t know the full story. And I think there are going to be several other shoes to drop on this.” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett Exclusive — Speaker McCarthy: Administration ‘Fighting Every Step of the Way’ Against Biden Family Business Investigations
Matthew Perdie / Breitbart News, Jack Knudsen / Breitbart News , Zenny Phuong / Breitbart News 0 seconds of 1 minute, 36 secondsVolume 90% 4:39 House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Breitbart News last week that Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has been “fighting” against transparency “every step of the way” with GOP investigators probing the president’s family business dealings. McCarthy’s interview, taped on Wednesday in the ceremonial U.S. House Speaker’s office, came before the Treasury Department finally, after weeks, relented and agreed to provide the many Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on Biden family members’ bank transactions. McCarthy sat for the hourlong interview as part of the long form Breitbart News exclusive On The Hill video series. The first part, on McCarthy’s decision to release Jan. 6, 2021, surveillance footage from the Capitol, was published last week. This second part is one of many other major topics, including on other investigations, the debt ceiling, leftist efforts to engage in censorship of conservatives, the rising threat of China, and the currently open U.S. southern border, addressed in the interview. More is forthcoming. SARs are when a bank flags for the government suspicious activity regarding transactions, and apparently several Biden family members including the president’s son Hunter Biden and his brother James Biden have several of them. For months this year, the Treasury Department refused to provide the documents to Congress, but after the McCarthy interview with Breitbart News last week the administration relented this week and agreed to provide the documents to the committee. “Why?” McCarthy asked when Breitbart News asked him why the Biden Administration was covering up these documents. “There are hundreds of them. It’s not easy to get one of those to happen, and it’s not with one bank. Why would they hold that up?” McCarthy said that House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) has the authority to follow this investigation wherever it leads, even though the Biden White House and administration have been resisting investigators at every turn. “Jamie Comer has been doing an excellent job on this,” McCarthy said when asked where this goes. “He has a great information book behind this. We are following the information every place it takes us but what we’re finding is the administration is fighting every step of the way. Why would they fight it? It’s very interesting to us. Why would they fight just the story on the laptop itself? Why would they go out of their way to get people who are in the intel community—literally, 52 of them—to sign a letter to say it was false? Well, we’re bringing those people in. We’re going to cross every T and dot every I and we’re going to get all the information here.” McCarthy would also not rule out the possibility that members of Biden’s family, such as his son Hunter or his brothers Frank or James or other family members of the president, or close business associates of theirs, would possibly be called to testify before congressional hearings later this year. “I won’t prejudge the work that Congressman Comer is doing,” McCarthy said when asked if Americans should expect members of the president’s family on the witness stand. “The chairman, he’s doing an excellent job. And he will, I promise you this, when we talk—he will follow it wherever it takes him.” Republicans have been making some headway with the Biden family investigations since their newly won majority in the 2022 midterm elections took office in January. Biden’s former assistant Kathy Chung is now cooperating with House GOP investigators, as is Biden family business associate Eric Schwerin. In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Obama's Man in China Now Beijing's Man in WashingtonFormer ambassador Baucus appears regularly on Chinese propaganda outlets
May 21, 2020 As the novel coronavirus wreaks havoc across the world, the Obama administration's ambassador to China has found a second lease on life as a pro-China talking head on regime propaganda outlets. Former ambassador Max Baucus has given at least four different interviews to Chinese propaganda outlets in the last two weeks, repeatedly comparing the U.S. rhetoric about China to both the McCarthy era and Nazi Germany. "Joe McCarthy [and] Adolf Hitler … rallied people up, making people believe things that were really not true," Baucus said during a May 12 interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), a regime mouthpiece. "The White House and some in Congress are making statements against China that are so over the top and so hypercritical, they are based not on the fact, or if they are based on fact, sheer demagoguery, and that's what McCarthy did in the 1950s." Since his retirement in 2017, Baucus has been a reliable critic of the Trump administration's increasingly confrontational China policy—chiefly the decision to wage a trade war with Beijing. He once warned that the White House's decision to impose additional tariffs was a "slap on the face" to China. But Baucus's recent comments in the pandemic era have been more sympathetic to China—and critical of the United States—than ever before. His post-retirement public statements praising China have coincided with his burgeoning overseas investments. In 2017, he founded the Baucus Group, a consulting firm that advises both American and Chinese businesses, according to his U.S. Chamber of Commerce biography. He also sits on the board of directors for Ingram Micro, a U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, as well as the board of advisers for Alibaba Group, one of China's largest tech companies. Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, said that it was "inappropriate" for a former ambassador to speak ill about his own government on a foreign propaganda outlet. "It's like going to China and … talking about your own government that way in meetings. I think that would be pretty inappropriate," Lohman said. "So it would be inappropriate speaking on state media." Baucus's public statements have received considerable attention from Beijing's propaganda outlets. When the former ambassador compared President Donald Trump's criticism of China to rhetoric used by Adolf Hitler and Joe McCarthy during a May 6 interview with CNN, Chinese propaganda outlets quickly amplified Baucus's comments about how Trump was "a little bit like Hitler in the '30s" and that Americans were worried about "getting their heads chopped off" if they voice their disagreement with the U.S. government's China policy. Xinhua News Agency, a state-owned outlet, extensively cited Baucus's attacks in a May 8 article, using it as evidence that the Trump administration is attempting to "deflect criticisms about their blunders by blaming China." The article was syndicated in party-controlled mouthpieces such as Global Times and People's Daily, according to the Investigative Research Center. Baucus then appeared on CGTN on May 12 to double down on his Hitler and McCarthy comparison, blaming the Trump administration for flaming "sheer demagoguery." "[The current U.S. rhetoric] is somewhat reminiscent, nowhere close to that yet, somewhat reminiscent of the McCarthy era and somewhat reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s," he told CGTN. The former ambassador also gave an exclusive interview to Global Times on May 14, where he said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's claim that the virus may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory "makes no sense" and accused both Democrats and Republicans of being tough on China to score political points in an election year. Baucus again appeared on CGTN on May 15, where he claimed that America is "sliding toward a form of McCarthyism" because the Trump administration is pressuring policymakers to be tough on China. The former ambassador did another CGTN media hit on May 16, this time appearing alongside his wife Melodee Hanes, who blamed the presidential election for making dialogue "difficult." "There are a lot of pretty smart people in the United States who are not speaking up. People in office, moderates, especially moderates on the Republican side," Baucus said on May 15. "They are afraid to speak up, they are intimidated, intimidated by President Trump. And it's kind of sliding toward a form of McCarthyism—how it is politically incorrect to speak the truth, speak the truth to power." When the Washington Free Beacon called the phone number listed for Baucus's home address, no one answered. A lawyer representing Baucus Group, the ambassador's consulting firm, also did not respond to a request for comment. While Baucus rarely enjoyed this much attention from Chinese state media outlets after his retirement, this is not the first time he has spoken to Chinese media outlets in recent years. Baucus also gave an exclusive interview to People's Daily in March 2018, criticizing U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods as the "wrong policy" and "too confrontational." He has also spoken at events backed by the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, a registered foreign agent of the Chinese government according to a 2018 congressional report. Lohman, the Heritage Foundation expert, said that while Baucus has the right to appear on any domestic and foreign outlets, he should not have addressed a propaganda outlet with the same degree of candidness that he did with CNN. "I think he must have gotten wrapped up in the media performances because when you shift from CNN to Global Times or CGTN, you've gone to an entirely new level," he said. "And there I think you just have to express yourself differently. It's not an appropriate place to air political differences." Published under: Barack Obama , China , Coronavirus , Max Baucus , Xi Jinping Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’ investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. |
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