To announce charges in three cases against foreign operatives working in the United States, Justice Department officials held a press conference last week that recalled the Red Scare days of the 1950s. This time, the alleged Communist evil doers are Chinese, not Russians.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray and others adopted a striking anti-China tone in describing a level of venality.
They are willing to “lie, cheat and steal their way to dominance,” Wray said, pointing to criminal cases involving agriculture, academia, green technology and governments.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, citing evidence that bribes were offered to obtain inside information about Justice’s investigation of Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, said the case “shows the interconnection between . . . intelligence officers and Chinese companies.”
After the officials talked in this hostile manner for nearly 30 minutes, reporters asked questions about details. But there were no questions or any comments from officials about the elephant in the room.
Said elephant being the fact that the family of the president of the United States had deals with a Chinese bank and a Chinese energy firm that were nearly identical to the pattern the officials had just called a national security threat. Yet no one dared to mention the obvious similarity.
The see-no-evil moment underscores the lack of seriousness in much of Washington about the near certainty that President Biden is compromised by his family’s lucrative relationship with agents of the Chinese government.
Tony Bobulinski is clear-eyed about the facts and believes the danger is greater than initially estimated. The former partner of Hunter and Jim Biden in the infamous deal with CEFC, the Chinese energy giant, Bobulinski now believes the effort by a string of Chinese business leaders to hook up with the Bidens was more than just a “political or influence investment,” as he once described it.
“I believe Chinese intelligence officials infiltrated the Biden family,” he told me last week. “And I think eventually the FBI and Justice Department will peel it back and realize this was a Chinese intel operation.”
The distinction is significant because of the stakes. Bobulinski, who two years ago said Joe Biden was the “big guy” slated to get a secret 10% cut in a deal with CEFC, credits his conclusion to what he calls “aggregating all the data points.”
Based on what he saw firsthand, what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the disappearance of most of the Chinese officials who paid millions of dollars to the Biden family, Bobulinski now believes there is “a zero chance that all this is random.”
Indeed, the idea that the targeting of the Bidens during Joe’s years as vice president was a Chinese intelligence operation is the only explanation that makes sense. The target was too big, the effort too extensive for it to be anything else.
GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson appear to be reaching a similar conclusion. They recently sent more than 200 bank documents from their probe of the Biden family to the US Attorney in Delaware who is ostensibly leading the federal probe of Hunter Biden that seems to be going nowhere.
The documents, the senators wrote, focus on “the Biden family’s connections to the Chinese regime and persons connected to its military and intelligence elements.”
Johnson told Fox News evidence the president is compromised is “hiding in plain sight.”
Broadly speaking, all of China’s spy network, cyber intrusions and theft of technology and business secrets undercut America and advance China’s aim of global domination.
National-security issue
But intelligence and military operations targeting America take the battle to a new level because of the aim of piercing our national security. A Carnegie Endowment report last spring summed up the results: “China’s intelligence agencies have stolen a significant volume of US military secrets in recent years, including aircraft designs. They have penetrated US political campaigns to gain insight into future American policymaking. And they have compromised America’s own espionage networks, reportedly helping to expose and disrupt US intelligence activities in China.”
The report added an ominous point: “China’s intelligence targeting of American officials has become a major justification for US tech restrictions.”
Nearly all those espionage earmarks converge to support the view the Biden family was targeted — and took the bait.
How much damage has been done already seems to be of no concern to Garland, Wray and the somnolent Washington media. Despite having Hunter’s laptop since 2019, there is zero indication the FBI has even considered the clear evidence that Joe benefited from the many millions Chinese handlers wired to Hunter’s accounts. Their inaction smells like a deliberate attempt not to know.
By all means, the Justice Department should continue to crack down on China’s myriad efforts to lie, cheat and steal its way to global dominance.
But its duty to safeguard national security makes it imperative that investigators also pay special attention to China’s efforts to undermine America’s strength by targeting key individuals and families. The failure to hold the Bidens to that standard is a national scandal today that could lead to a national catastrophe tomorrow.
Father Gigante was a giant
Frank Sinatra singing “My Way” is an anthem for a certain generation, but it would be hard to find a less likely place to hear it played than a funeral mass in an upstate Roman Catholic church. But because the funeral was celebrating the life of Father Louis Gigante, the song seemed tailor-made for the moment.
For all his 90 years, the Bronx “street priest” defied conventions. Determined to help his mostly poor, mostly Puerto Rican congregation improve their lot in this life, Father G got involved in politics, was elected to the City Council and became a power broker.
As he told the Harvard Crimson in 1974 during a stint at the Kennedy Institute of Politics, “I am able to get quick results for the people of the South Bronx on housing and other matters. If doing that is ‘criminal,’ I must plead guilty. But I don’t think the people in the South Bronx believe that what I do is wrong.”
What started as getting landlords to provide hot water soon grew into something far larger: Gigante became a housing developer. His not-for-profit company, the South East Bronx Community Organization — SEBCO — has built thousands of affordable apartments and transformed whole neighborhoods.
I met him in 1981 while writing a story on his early work for the New York Times, and was privileged to call him a friend ever since.
One of five boys born to immigrant parents in Manhattan, he got a scholarship to Georgetown University and was captain of the basketball team, even as some of his brothers were becoming notorious.
“A man for all people,” his mass card says, and the stories, people told at his funeral, both heartwarming and hilarious, proved it. Father G indeed did it his way.
May he rest in peace.
