Friday, July 7, 2023

China: White House Cocaine Scandal Proves America’s Status as ‘Drug-Infested Nation’ - AND MOST OF THESE DRUGS COME FROM AMERICA'S BIGGEST ENEMIES: NARCOMEX AND RED CHINA


“Joe Biden is great on immigration. I guess depends on your perspective. If you’re a human trafficker, or drug dealer, or all those migrants wearing the Biden let us in shirts, you’d give him an A-plus, plus, but the American people would give him an F. The crisis we said our border was not only entirely predictable. It was predicted. I predicted it last fall that if you campaign all year long on open borders, amnesty, and health care for illegals, you’re going to get more migrants at the border. That’s exactly what’s happened every month since the election.”                      SEN. TOM COTTON


Growing Chinese expat communities in the United States and Mexico — desperate to access their money back home — and cartels sitting on piles of dollars from illicit drug sales in the United States are creating opportunities for themselves. And problems for law enforcement.


Nolte: Secret Service Vet Says ‘Only Family’ Could Sneak Cocaine into White House

Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, during a state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, June 22, 2023. Biden and Modi announced a series of defense and …
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Secret Service veteran Dan Bongino says only the family of the president could sneak cocaine into the White House.

Hunter Biden is the president’s son. FYI.

“There’s absolutely ZERO chance anyone other than a family member brought that cocaine inside the White House complex,” Bongino tweeted Thursday. “No chance that would make it past the mag/security checkpoints. Family bypasses those.”

For those who don’t know, an unzippered bag containing cocaine was found in the White House Sunday. The Secret Service is currently investigating, which should be terribly difficult in one of the most secure buildings in the world, and one filled with surveillance cameras.

At first, as Americans have come to expect, we were lied to about the cocaine being found in a highly-trafficked part of the White House. This means anyone who was not named Hunter Biden could have left it there. Far-left Politico immediately rushed to the aid of the White House to loudly proclaim “White House Cocaine Culprit Unlikely to Be Found”!!!!

Politico is nothing if not a good dog.

“[O]ne official familiar with the investigation cautioned that the source of the drug was unlikely to be determined given that it was discovered in a highly trafficked area of the West Wing,” Politico helpfully reported in the hopes America would shrug and say, Oh, well. I’ll guess we’ll never know. Let’s move on.

Another official helpfully told Politico, “Even if there were surveillance cameras, unless you were waving it around, it may not have been caught… It’s a bit of a thoroughfare. People walk by there all the time.”

You see all kinds of people not named Hunter Biden walk by there all the time. All kinds of entitled people, see? All kinds of people not named Hunter Biden who think they can get away with anything, including snorting coke in the White House, stroll by this part of the White House, see? People like that are everywhere and have access to this highly-trafficked public area, see?

Except.

The lie collapsed and we now know the unzippered bag of cocaine was found in a much more secure area, an area so secure, even Biden sycophant Andrea Mitchell was forced admit  “just average people just can’t get in there[.]”

Well, how about that?

Is Hunter Biden just average?

Hey, I’m just asking questions here.

Of that highly-secure entrance where just average people just can’t get in, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) confirmed what Bongino said…

“I’ve been in and out of that entrance a million times. It’s one of the most heavily secured and constantly surveilled places on earth,” tweeted Lee. “They keep detailed records on who enters and exits and when. I find it difficult to accept that they can’t figure out who put the cocaine there.”

“This entrance is used by very few people—just White House staff and people with an pre-approved appointment in the West Wing,” Lee added. “Non-staff have to go through multiple layers of security screening, and can enter only after they’ve been vetted and approved by the Secret Service.”

“Also, as my friend [Dan Bongino] just reminded me,” Lee continued, “pretty much everyone who enters the West Wing has to empty their pockets, and the Secret Service would immediately notice and stop anyone walking in with even a small bag of white powder.”

Transsexuals running around the White House naked. Open bags of cocaine left in highly secure areas of the White House… What a relief dignity has returned to DC.

Can I say it? Someone needs to say it, so I’m going to say it… This cocaine mystery is the dumbest mystery in the world. Hey, I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before, and if I am, I will say so, but… Come on! Hunter Biden is an entitled gangster who knows he can get away with anything, and he also happens to be a degenerate drug addict with access to the White House without fear of being searched. Yes, I could be wrong, but can we all stop talking around The Obvious?

Motive, opportunity… Come on, y’all.

As far as I’m concerned, if this ”mystery” is never solved, that’s proof the coke belonged to Hunter Biden. Because 1) it can’t remain a mystery for long, and 2) Hunter is the only one the White House would cover up for.

This is not rocket science.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNCFollow his Facebook Page here.

China: White House Cocaine Scandal Proves America’s Status as ‘Drug-Infested Nation’

UNITED STATES - APRIL 24: A U.S. flag redesigned with marijuana leaves blows in the wind as DCMJ.org holds a protest in front of the U.S. Capitol on Monday, April 24, 2017, to call on Congress to reschedule the drug classification of marijuana. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

The Chinese government propaganda outlet Global Times mocked the ongoing mystery of the discovery of cocaine in the West Wing of the White House in a column Thursday, calling America generally “drug-infested” and condemning reports that law enforcement may not be able to identify the cocaine’s owner as “ridiculous.”

The state outlet also used the scandal as an attempt to absolve the Chinese Communist Party of its substantial role in global fentanyl trafficking and the ongoing opioid crisis in America.

For years, law enforcement officials have accused China of selling precursor substances to Mexican drug cartels later used to make fentanyl in the Western Hemisphere, much of which then crosses the northern border. The Global Times admitted to China’s role in manufacturing those products but dismissed them as legal under Chinese law and not comparable to the cocaine reportedly found in the White House.

The Washington Post first reported on Monday that security officials in the White House had found a mysterious powdery substance inside the building that later tested positive for cocaine. White powders could present a major security risk, as several high-grade poisons — including anthrax and ricin — can come in the form of powder.

On Thursday, the Secret Service confirmed to Breitbart News that officials had found the cocaine in a small plastic bag near a West Wing entrance. The area is reportedly a “working” area not typically frequented by public tours but often receiving staffers or officials in the administration of President Joe Biden whose offices are elsewhere. The Washington, DC, outlet Politico reported, citing anonymous sources, that officials believe it will be “very difficult” to identify the owner of the drug.

Referring to the Politico report, the Global Times explained in a column on Thursday:

While cocaine was found at the presidential palace of the world’s most powerful country, a location known for its high level of security and extensive protection measures, US officials are unable to identify the responsible party and attribute it to the limitations of White House surveillance cameras. Isn’t it ridiculous to rely on such a feeble excuse to navigate through this situation?

The state newspaper predicted no “actual result from the promised investigation” into the discovery of the drug and went on to claim that drug use by presidents or in the White House was a common historical phenomenon and a product of America’s culture, presumably inferior to Chinese communist authoritarianism.

“The presence of drugs in the White House serves as a perfect example of the inability of the US, as a drug-infested nation, to manage illegal substances effectively,” the Chinese propaganda outlet asserted, calling Biden “the face of the drug epidemic in the country.”

“With illegal substances infiltrating the White House and US presidents setting an example as drug users, one wonders if the US can ever truly eradicate its drug crisis,” the outlet proclaimed, citing Chinese regime-approved “experts” that Democrats in particular “call for looser drug regulation, which means they indulge drugs.”

The Chinese government, through its media outlets, has, for years, condemned American “values” as inferior to Chinese communism because of the existence of drug use in the United States.

“Drug abuse in American society is very rampant with addiction multiplying sharply in many areas. It is hard to find even one young person in the country who hasn’t tried drugs,” state media proclaimed in 2018.

“In the U.S., consuming marijuana is considered a private affair or even a manifestation of personality and taste,” the Global Times observed with disgust a year later, comparing marijuana use to abuse of highly concentrated fentanyl, a deadly opioid.

The Communist Party denies that drug abuse is a problem in China and refuses to accept any responsibility for massive sales of fentanyl precursor drugs to Mexican cartels. As Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram explained last year, “What we know is that China is providing chemicals to Mexico, to the criminal drug networks that are then mass-producing these fake prescription pills.”

“They’re being sold as if they were Xanax, as if they were Oxy, as if they were Percocet. But there’s no Xanax, no Oxy, no Percocet in them. They’re fentanyl. But it isn’t just young people that we see, it’s also older Americans,” she noted.

A report by the analytics firm Chainalysis, published in May, estimated that Chinese fentanyl precursor suppliers collected about $38 million in payments for the substances via cryptocurrency between 2018 and 2023.

The government of radical leftist Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged China’s role in the fentanyl crisis in a letter to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in April in which he cordially requested that the Communist Party help Mexico identify ships trafficking the offending substances into the country. China replied by denying that any such activity was occurring.

On Thursday, the Global Times celebrated China for its alleged “extraordinary achievements” in its drug war, “a resounding response to the vicious and baseless smears as well as buck-passing from the US on the issue.” It claimed that “Chinese people are not familiar with ‘fentanyl'” due to this alleged success and blamed the United States for the prevalence of the drug in the country.

In the same article, the Global Times admitted that suppliers can freely generate precursor substances under the Chinese government.

“Disregarding these intensive drug-control efforts by China, the US has hyped that the country is ‘sourcing fentanyl precursor chemicals from China,’ trying to put the label of ‘drug trafficker’ on China,” the state newspaper claimed.

“This kind of hype is very amateurish. The ‘fentanyl precursors’ mentioned by the US are actually chemicals that can be used in the production of fentanyl, but they are ordinary commodities that are not controlled under international drug conventions and Chinese law,” it revealed.

“A recent discovery of cocaine in the White House once again exposed the chaotic management over drugs in the US,” the article concluded.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

Brnovich: China Is ‘Intentionally’ Contributing to U.S. Drug Crisis ‘to Undermine our Country’

 

IAN HANCHETT

17 Dec 20210

1:22

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Arizona Attorney General and Republican senatorial candidate Mark Brnovich said that drug precursors used by drug cartels to manufacture meth and fentanyl pills are coming from China, and he believes China is doing so on purpose “to undermine our country and to undermine values.”

Brnovich said, [relevant remarks begin around 2:05] “I would remind everyone, including the Biden administration, that the cartels control everything that goes across our southern border. And whether that’s human beings or whether it’s these drugs that are killing our children, they are making a profit and they are pushing this into our country. And one of the things, Dana, I think that’s so underreported is that we know, as prosecutors, I was a gang prosecutor, federal prosecutor, the precursor drugs are coming in from China. China’s doing this intentionally, I believe, to undermine our country and to undermine values. And then the cartels get those precursor chemicals. They’re making meth, they’re making these fake fentanyl pills, and then they’re flooding them into our market.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

 

 

Chinese Intermediaries Launder Cartels' Drug Proceeds in the United States

From the U.S. to China to the cartels

By Andrew R. Arthur 

 

In a post last week on drugs and the border, I referenced the following quote from the DEA: "Due to China's currency control restrictions, Asian TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] have taken advantage of the availability of U.S. dollars belonging to Mexican and Colombian TCOs in the United States by acquiring the U.S. dollars in exchange for the payment of Colombian/Mexican pesos in the respective drug source country." A recent federal court conviction in Chicago and a Reuters article on that case explain how the scheme works, at least on a small scale.

The DOJ press release on that case explains that one "Xianbing Gan" was convicted on three counts of money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, in a scheme to move drug proceeds from the Windy City to China, and then on to drug traffickers in Mexico.

Reuters fleshes out the scheme. Moving vast sums of illicit drug money out of the United States is a difficult — and for the perpetrators, dangerous — task, as the article explains:

The only thing tougher than moving illegal drugs across borders is getting the profits back to Mexico's cartels, U.S. officials said. Cash is heavy, and transporting it exposes traffickers to lots of risk. Putting it into the banking system is perilous, too. The U.S. and Mexican financial systems have been geared to detect dirty money.

The scheme described bypassed all of those impediments. Gan's case was premised on the testimony of one of his conspirators, a Singapore national working out of New York named Lim Seok Pheng, who became a cooperating witness for the government after she was arrested in May 2018 at JFK on suspicion of laundering money.

Lim would collect vast sums of cash (between $150,000 and $1 million at a clip) from contacts in the cartels in New York and Chicago (as well as other cities, apparently), using burner phones and contact information. She would then work with U.S.-based Chinese merchants to convert the money to yuan in banks in China in real time. Lim would hand the merchants the cash, and they would transfer the money from their accounts in China to Gan's account in that country.

Why would those merchants be willing to do this? The Chinese government limits the amount of cash that its citizens can transfer out of the country to $50,000 per year, but authorities in that country would (likely) think that there was nothing amiss in transfers between two bank accounts in China. Oh, and the merchants got a premium on the money that they transferred, but there is no evidence that they were aware of the provenance of the cash they received.

To get the money from China to Mexico, Gan allegedly would then engage in the same sort of transfer on the southern side of the border. Cash would be transferred from Gan's account to those of Chinese merchants with access to pesos in Mexico.

Gan (who ran a seafood business out of Guadalajara, Mexico, exporting jellyfish to China) contends that he was a patsy for another Chinese national named Pan Haiping, who duped him into using his Chinese account to launder the money. Haiping is in custody in Mexico awaiting extradition to the United States on money laundering charges (using Gan's and other Chinese bank accounts) handed down by a grand jury in March 2019. According to U.S. authorities, the laundered money was then transferred to Mexican drug cartels.

Reuters reports that Chinese money brokers in Mexico have avoided the conflicts amongst the cartels themselves, and have (according to an unnamed DEA agent) "coordinat[ed] money contracts with both the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels on the same day" — no mean feat.

If all of this sounds familiar, it is akin to a "hawala" scheme, in which (overly simply) money is paid to a broker in the United States (a "hawaladar"), and a similar amount in local funds is provided to another individual abroad.

As the Treasury Department and INTERPOL have explained, hawalas are cost-effective (much more so than converting dollars into the local currency and then having it delivered abroad), efficient (taking one to two days — at most), reliable, avoid bureaucracy, and largely untaxable. Best of all — from the prospective of a drug TCO — hawalas leave no paper trail.

Hawalas came to the fore in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the "9/11 Commission") explained:

Al Qaeda frequently moved the money it raised by hawala. ... In some ways, al Qaeda had no choice after its move to Afghanistan in 1996: first, the banking system there was antiquated and undependable; and second, formal banking was risky due to the scrutiny that al Qaeda received after the August 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, including UN resolutions against it and the Taliban. Bin Ladin relied on the established hawala networks operating in Pakistan, in Dubai, and throughout the Middle East to transfer funds efficiently.

Note that hawalas and other similar informal schemes rely on "trust" between the remitter and the hawaladar, but the drug scheme described did not necessarily require such an archaic notion. To the degree that any trust was involved: (1) the scheme was lucrative for all involved, and they would necessarily have an interest in its viability; and (2) Mexican TCOs have their own means of ensuring compliance.

Interestingly, as per Reuters, such Chinese money launderers are undercutting their Mexican and Colombian competition by as much as half, because they can charge big fees (up to 10 percent) on Chinese nationals who are seeking to avoid that country's restrictive currency controls. This, in turn, "allows the Chinese money brokers ... to charge traffickers nominal fees of just a few percentage points. The money launderers still turn a handsome profit while locking in a steady supply of coveted dollars and euros from cartel customers."

The money is good. Lim, in her 2019 plea agreement on money laundering, admitted that she laundered approximately $48 million in drug cash with Gan and Pan Haiping from 2016 to September 2017, taking (according to the government) a .5 percent commission (or in the neighborhood of $240,000; Gan was convicted of laundering more than $530,000 in cartel cash).

Nor were they alone. Charges are pending in Virginia and Oregon against two other alleged Chinese money laundering groups.

That said, Reuters reports that this is not the only method that Mexican cartels use to launder their money, sometimes opting for "trade-based money laundering schemes". For example, that outlet explains that Mexico's Financial Intelligence Unit said publicly in July that Chinese nationals who were laundering money for the Jalisco New Generation cartel used drug proceeds in order to buy bulk orders of shoes from China, which they would then resell in Mexico to get cash.

In any event, cartel money laundering by Chinese rings is a big problem for law enforcement. There is little or no visibility into the Chinese banking system for outsiders (the article describes the country as "a veritable black hole for U.S. and Mexican authorities", although the Chinese government contends it is willing to help, while "stress[ing] the need for the two countries to work on the 'principle of respecting each other's laws, equality and mutual benefit'"), and the sentencing memorandum in Gan's case (cited by Reuters) suggests that "Chinese money brokers based in Mexico 'have come to dominate international money laundering markets'".

Growing Chinese expat communities in the United States and Mexico — desperate to access their money back home — and cartels sitting on piles of dollars from illicit drug sales in the United States are creating opportunities for themselves. And problems for law enforcement.

According to the DEA alert, the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel in Mexico, using chemicals largely sourced from China, are primarily responsible for most of the fentanyl being trafficked inside the United States.

Colorado Cops Bust Alleged Fentanyl Ring with Ties to Mexican Cartel

Jefferson County, Colorado, West Metro Drug Taskforce
Jefferson County, Colorado, West Metro Drug Taskforce

The Jefferson County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) West Metro Drug Task Force arrested ten alleged drug ring members suspected of distributing fentanyl-laced counterfeit oxycodone pills, methamphetamine, heroin, and other drugs in and around the Denver metro area. Investigators say the group purchased the narcotics directly from a Mexican drug cartel. As of Thursday, the street value of the narcotics seized by investigators totaled more than $5 million.

The arrests followed a Colorado Grand Jury indictment of sixteen suspects on 116 felony charges. The indictments came at the end of a nine-month-long West Metro Drug Task Force investigation. The investigation began as a drug distribution case involving methamphetamine and counterfeit oxycodone pills containing fentanyl. Task Force Investigators used a Title III Wiretap and undercover operatives to develop information on illegal narcotics transactions that uncovered details of the drug trafficking operation and a host of additional crimes.

Jefferson County Colorado Sheriff's Office

Jefferson County Colorado Sheriff’s Office

The investigation, subsequent search, and arrest activities associated with the law enforcement operation resulted in the seizure of more than 400 pounds of methamphetamine, 325,000 pills containing fentanyl, three kilograms of cocaine, one pound of heroin, and 1.5 pounds of fentanyl powder. The amount of fentanyl seized by West Metro Drug Task Force investigators equates to over 350,000 lethal doses. Authorities also seized seventeen firearms — many of which had been reported stolen.

The task force presented the results of their investigation to a grand jury through Colorado’s First Judicial District Attorney’s Office. The grand jury subsequently returned indictments against 16 individuals for charges including the unlawful distribution or sale of a controlled substance, unlawful possession with intent to sell or distribute a controlled substance, possession of a weapon by a previous offender/special offender, criminal attempt second-degree kidnapping, criminal attempt aggravated motor vehicle theft, vehicular eluding, leaving the scene of an accident, first-degree criminal trespass, and obstructing a peace officer.

Six suspects indicted by the grand jury remain at large. Officials did not name the yet-to-be-arrested suspects.

The West Metro Drug Task Force is comprised of deputies and officers from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the Colorado Joint Counterdrug Task Force, Golden Police Department, Lakewood Police Department, and the Wheat Ridge Police Department. The First Judicial District Attorney’s Office and many other Colorado law enforcement agencies assisted throughout the investigation and contributed to the successful indictments of multiple high-level drug dealers, officials stated.

Ten suspects that have been arrested are:

  • Thiago Escalante-Torres, 22
  • Angelo Gonzalez-Hernandez, 21
  • Johnathan Kincaid, 41
  • Stephanie Larson, 25
  • Francisco Romero Portella, 35
  • Jonathan Ortega-Carias, 25
  • Pablo Ramirez-Martinez aka Alexander Ramirez-Martinez, 26
  • Felicia Redearth, 42
  • Daniel Emilio Torres-Torres, 23
  • Kristy Wilson, 39

According to a Drug Enforcement Administration Public Safety Alert, Fentanyl remains the deadliest drug threat facing the United States. It is a highly addictive synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. An amount small enough to fit on the tip of a pencil is considered a potentially deadly dose. According to the DEA alert, the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel in Mexico, using chemicals largely sourced from China, are primarily responsible for most of the fentanyl being trafficked inside the United States.

Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol.  Before his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.