Major League Baseball had extended and expanded its contract with a Chinese telecommunications giant shortly before boycotting the state of Georgia over the league’s disagreement with the election reforms recently enacted by the Peach State’s democratically elected governor and legislature.
Chinese state media reported on April 1 that the MLB will continue to be aired on the streaming platform operated by Chinese tech giant Tencent, which has significant ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Tencent is of the Chinese companies that had temporarily dropped NBA games as a form of censorship after former Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey spoke out in support of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
On April 2, the day after the announcement of the Chinese deal, the MLB moved its annual All-Star game out of Atlanta, Georgia, in response to a set of election reforms signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp last month. MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred said in a statement that the move would “demonstrate our values as a sport.”
The league did not respond to an emailed request to confirm the details of the Chinese deal and a question on how continuing business with Chinademonstrates its values considering the recent U.S. recognition of a genocide being carried out by the CCP against the Uyghur Muslims. The CCP is responsible for an estimated 100 million unnatural deaths since taking power in China in 1949.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) flagged the coincidental timing of the MLB’s China deal and Georgia boycott, writing on Twitter that the league has caved to pressure, moving the draft and Allstar game “the same week they announce a deal with a company backed by the genocidal Communist Party of China.”
“Why are we still listening to these woke corporate hypocrites on taxes, regulations & anti-trust?” Rubio wrote.
The MLB enjoys a federal anti-trust exemption.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) on April 2 instructed his staff to draft a bill that would remove the exemption in response to the Georgia boycott.
“An overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans support requiring an ID to vote, and any organization that abuses its power to oppose secure elections deserves increased scrutiny under the law,” Duncan wrote on Twitter.
Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed a package of election reforms into law last month which expanded voting hours and access to early voting. The new law also required absentee voters to provide a copy of their ID alongside their ballot, something the state had already required for in-person voters.
The reforms have become the target of left-wing criticism, including false claims by President Joe Biden about the law requiring the polls to close by 5 p.m. The bill had actually expanded the voting hours to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Commentary – TrevorLoudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics. He is best known for his book “Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress” and his similarly-themed documentary film “Enemies Within.” His recently published book is “White House Reds: Communists, Socialists & Security Risks Running for U.S. President, 2020.”
It’s the 1930s all over again. American communists are now treating the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the same slavish reverence once reserved for Stalin and the mighty Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
The Communist Party USA (CPUSA), once shamelessly subservient to the CPSU, has now completely transferred its loyalties to the CCP.
On March 10, a high-level delegation from the CPUSA met with senior CCP officials in Beijing. According to an article on the CPUSA website, the International Department of the CPUSA and the International Commission of the Central Committee of the CCP “held a bilateral meeting to celebrate and discuss the 100th anniversary” of the CCP.
Los Angeles-based Rossana Cambron, national co-chair of the CPUSA, and Houston, Texas, comrade Alvaro Rodriguez, the party’s International Secretary, led the U.S. delegation.
Despite being a small party (estimated 5,000 members), the CPUSA delegation was treated with considerable respect and interest by CCP officials.
Delegate Tony Pecinovsky, a CPUSA organizer and labor historian from St. Louis, Missouri, gave the CCP officials an overview of 100 years of party history.
Comrade Maicol David Lynch from New York explained to his Chinese hosts that “most young people have a positive attitude toward socialism, especially after the political election campaigns by Bernie Sanders. The CPUSA has attracted a lot of interest from young people and increasing numbers of young people are applying for membership.”
Comrade Zhou, the CCP’s international secretary, recounted a century of U.S.–China relations: “We remember how Americans came to help us during the War of Japanese Aggression, we remember the solidarity that the CPUSA showed the CPC during this time of resistance.”
Comrade Yinchun, a member of the CCP’s central committee and international commission, boasted of China’s recent eradication of extreme poverty: “Our socialist market economy has lifted millions out of dire poverty, and by 2035, they will have achieved an even higher standard of life.”
The CPUSA also contributed to the Wanshou Forum on Feb. 28, 2019, in Beijing, on the theme of “Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind and Development of Socialism in the World.” The address was prepared by Cambron, but because of illness was delivered by Ohio comrade Aleena Starks.
“Thank you for inviting our Party to participate in learning about the many important developments in your country. I bring greetings from our Party’s National committee, wishing you all the best in establishing socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
Then CPUSA chairman John Bachtell and New York comrade Carol Widom also toured China from May 26 to June 3, 2018, in a visit that included a conference on the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth.
Some CPUSA members work in China promoting the CCP’s propaganda line. Their copy is reminiscent of 1930s Western sycophants and their unabashed praise for Stalinist Russia’s great achievements.
Houston communist Ian Goodrum is a writer and digital editor for China Daily in Beijing.
In October 2018, Goodrum wrote in the CPUSA’s People’s World:
“China and other countries governed by communist parties stand alone in that they have been able to chart their own course and resist imperialist aggression. They have not been subject to the same stringent limitations which keep so much of the developing world languishing in poverty and debt, limitations following the same rules of profit extraction analyzed by Marx in Capital.”
Boston activist Dylan Walker, a member of the Walden Workers Club of the CPUSA, is a graduate student studying international politics at Beijing Language and Culture University.
On Oct. 14 and 15, 2017, comrade Walker and fellow Boston CPUSA member Wadi’h Halabi participated in the 8th World Socialism Forum of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. According to the Boston CPUSA, “The theme of the international gathering focused on the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia and applying lessons from it to an examination of the ‘Temporal Characteristics of the Great Transformation Era, and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.’”
In the same month, CCP mouthpiece the Global Times released an interview with Walker that, according to the Hong Kong Free Press, was viewed 78,000 times on Chinese video platform miaopai.
In the interview, Walker says he became inspired by former CCP leader Mao Zedong’s thinking during his first visit to China in 2012:
“I think communism is the most advanced and the ideal social and political system. We just want to make sure everyone can get access to basic welfare and rights. … When I came to China for the first time, I bought versions of the ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao’ in Chinese and English. I read it almost every day after going back to the U.S. I kept it with me during class and I read it when I had time after classes. If I hadn’t learned the quotations, I wouldn’t have joined the Communist Party USA. So, Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China have a special place in my heart. …
“The CPC now is admirable for me. Especially since President Xi Jinping took office. The corruption crackdown has swept nationwide. … Every time when I browse the website of the People’s Daily and Global Times, I can see such reports almost every day as corrupt officials get arrested. … What’s terrible is that a communist might have doubts towards communism and socialism, and then loses this belief and faith. Just like what President Xi said before, some communist members lack ‘calcium,’ that is lack of belief in communism and Marxism.”
“Wahd’i has been a special consultant to the government of China the past dozen years. He travels to meet with high level personnel from the Communist Party of China to advise them on problems that loom in governing while maintaining the principals of not just Marxism, but the roots of power, the people.”
The March 2021 CPUSA delegation to China committed to working in “the interest of world peace, international solidarity, and cooperation rather than international confrontation.”
In communist terminology “world peace” simply means an absence of resistance to world Marxist-Leninist domination. What would the CPUSA do if the United States got into a full-scale military confrontation with China?
An advertisement for a CPUSA reading group at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Oakland on Dec. 4, 2010, answered the question this way:
“The United States government has been committing direct acts of provocation against China’s economy, and other aspects of its society, including its military. … If these confrontations are allowed to become full-blown, it … will demand from all of us new energies to struggle on yet another—perhaps the biggest—domestic front against U.S. Imperialism.”
In other words, the CPUSA would possibly fight for the CCP on U.S. soil.
If the Biden administration is truly serious about uncovering dangerous internal enemies in this country, it need look no further than the CPUSA.
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics. He is best known for his book “Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress” and his similarly themed documentary film “Enemies Within.” His recently published book is “White House Reds: Communists, Socialists & Security Risks Running for U.S. President, 2020.”
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A leading Chinese professor—who is also an adviser to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—laid out a comprehensive plan for the communist regime to overthrow the United States as the world’s superpower.
The professor’s multi-pronged strategy involves a range of malign actions to subvert the United States while strengthening the Chinese regime. They include: interfering in U.S. elections, controlling the American market, cultivating global enemies to challenge the United States, stealing American technology, expanding Chinese territory, and influencing international organizations.
The plan was explained in detail by Jin Canrong, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Beijing’s Renmin University of China, in a July 2016 speech on “Sino-U.S. Strategic Philosophy” given over two full days at Southern Club Hotel Business Class in south China’s Guangzhou City.
“We want to be the world leader,” Jin said, explaining Chinese Leader Xi Jinping’s desire for a “national rejuvenation” of the country.
Dubbed “teacher of the state” by Chinese netizens, Jin is a prominent scholar known for his fiery anti-U.S. rhetoric. He is an advisor to two powerful bodies of the CCP, the Organization Department, and the United Front Work Department, though it is unclear how close he is to Xi.
The strategy to topple the United States was composed of two broad components: weakening America through both internal and foreign sources; and strengthening the Chinese regime’s economic, military, and diplomatic power.
Using a metaphor of a company to illustrate the U.S.-China dynamic, Jin likened the United States to a company president, and China to a vice president who wants the top job.
“The United States is a middle-aged man, who is good looking, has strong capabilities, and support from most employees,” Jin said.
“[To replace it], we first need to create the conditions to make it easier for the United States to make mistakes. Second, we should make it as busy as possible [dealing with problems], to the extent that it will feel depressed and want to give up. Third, we should become intertwined with the United States, so that it can’t attack us.”
Jin said the CCP was thinking of many ways to weaken the United States, which he described as a “very difficult” task. The professor offered four practical tactics.
1. Manipulating Elections
Jin suggested that the CCP should interfere in U.S. elections to bring pro-Beijing candidates to power. He singled out races for seats in the House of Representatives as an easy target.
“The Chinese government wants to arrange Chinese investments in every single congressional district to control thousands of voters in each district,” Jin said.
He noted with a population (at the time) of about 312 million and 435 congressional districts, roughly 750,000 residents live in each district.
“The voting rate in the United States is about 30 percent, which means around 200,000 residents in each congressional district vote for the representative in that district,” Jin said. “Normally the difference of votes between two candidates is 10,000 or less. If China has thousands of votes on hand, China will be the boss of the candidates.”
Jin said China’s ambition is to control at least the House.
“The best scenario is China can buy the United States, and change the U.S. House of Representatives into the second Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress,” he said, referring to the committee that oversees the CCP’s rubber-stamp legislature.
2. Controlling the US Market
A container ship berthing at the port in Qingdao, in China’s eastern Shandong province on May 17, 2019. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Ramping up Chinese investments in the United States is another way to exert influence in the country’s political system, Jin said, noting that this tactic has the added benefit of enriching Chinese business people and the CCP.
“The investment opportunities in the United States are relatively good,” he said. “The U.S. market is open—more open than the Japanese and European ones,” he continued, adding that its benefits include its size, transparency, and stability.
He said the Chinese regime wants Chinese business people to control the U.S. market, and also for them to develop their businesses in the country.
To reach this goal, the Chinese regime had tried to negotiate with Washington for the U.S.-China Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). The agreement was actively negotiated for the decade prior to 2017, but fell off the agenda during President Donald Trump’s administration.
Some U.S. companies wishing to enter the Chinese market, and the U.S.-China Business Council have advocated for the signing of a BIT.
3. Fostering Enemies of the US
Intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched by the Vladimir Monomakh nuclear submarine of the Russian navy from the Sera of Okhotsk, Russia, on Dec. 12, 2020. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
Jin said the CCP’s “strategic task” was to make sure the United States has not less than four enemies.
Four enemies are needed to stretch the United States’ resources while bogging the government down in domestic debates over which threat to prioritize, Jin said.
For instance, before WWII the United States had two adversaries, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. “The Americans debated over and over about who is the real threat,” he said.
“If the United States has four enemies, it will totally lose its direction.”
Analyzing the situation as of 2016, Jin concluded that the United States only has three adversaries: “Terrorism is definitely an enemy of the United States. Russia looks like another one … Definitely, the United States treats us as a competitor … It’s not enough.”
The professor said that in the past few years, the CCP had tried to develop Brazil into an adversary of the United States, but was unsuccessful because Brazil “didn’t want to be improved.”
He said the CCP had pumped a lot of investment into Brazil in the bid to get its support on global issues, including taking stances against the United States. Xi had visited Brazil in 2014 and agreed to invest in infrastructure in the country’s western region, as well as a railway to link ports in Brazil and Peru.
Jin said the Chinese regime has given up on this approach and is trying to find a candidate to develop into a U.S. adversary.
4. Causing International Problems for the US
Jin said the Chinese regime was at a strategic advantage due to the United States’ role as global enforcer: whenever there is a crisis in the world, the United States would have to intervene to maintain global stability, which in turn drains U.S. resources and diverts its attention away from China.
As examples, he cited the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which he described as “completely not strategically valuable” endeavors that cost the United States “$6 trillion and 10,000 soldiers’ lives.”
The result was that the United States “wasted ten years [without being aware of China’s development], and let China grow big,” Jin said.
Another possible tactic is to sell the CCP’s holding of U.S. Treasury bonds to precipitate a debt crisis, he said. According to the U.S. Treasury, China currently holds nearly $1.1 trillion in U.S. treasury securities.
Finally, engaging in drawn-out negotiations with the United States is also an effective strategy to bog down the United States, while giving the regime the time to focus on developing itself, according to Jin. During such negotiations, the United States wouldn’t take punitive actions against the CCP such as sanctions, and instead focus its energy on preparing and carrying out the talks. Meanwhile, the Chinese regime, which has no intention of negotiating in good faith, would use the breathing space given to it over the course of the negotiations to solidify its power both inside and outside of China.
Former deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger in February warnedof the CCP’s “negotiation traps.” Pottinger said years of successive formal dialogues between the two sides, such as the “Strategic Economic Dialogue” allowed the regime to “draw out the clock” and continue its economic assaults on the United States with impunity.
Strengthening the Chinese Regime
China’s first self-developed large passenger jetliner C919 is presented after it rolled off the production line at Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Co. in Shanghai, China on November 2, 2015. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
Jin said the Chinese regime has greatly relied on the U.S. trade and investments to spur its economic development over the past four decades. He highlighted four approaches to expand the CCP’s economic and political power at home and abroad.
1. Stealing US Technology
The professor admitted that the CCP has depended on stolen American technology to fuel its growth.
“China’s industry has a large output, but lacks certain technology,” Jin said. “In the past 30 years, we bought technology, 46 percent of which were from Germany. But the United States has the best technology, but it doesn’t sell to us.”
He added, “Americans think that Chinese hackers steal a lot of their things. This may very well be true.” Jin said key technology for China’s J-20 fighter jet and DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile was stolen from the United States.
The regime is also eager to get its hands on American space technology.
In June 2016, China’s Long March 7 rocket sent an orbital debris clean-up satellite Aolong-1 to space. Beijing claimed that Aolong-1 only brought space debris back to earth, but Jin suggested the satellite had another mission.
“The U.S. said that [Aolong-1] was collecting American satellites [from the space], and bringing them back to China,” Jin said. “We can disassemble [the American] satellites and reassemble them into Chinese ones.”
2. Expanding the Regime’s Territory
Jin believed that the Chinese regime would occupy the whole of the South China Sea and Taiwan in the near future.
The CCP lays claim to almost all of the South China Sea despite a 2016 ruling by an international court finding that its territorial claims were unlawful. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan also have competing claims in the waterways. Home to rich fishing grounds and potentially valuable natural resources, the South China Sea is also one of the world’s major shipping routes.
One of China’s man-made islands in the South China Sea, May 21, 2015. (U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters)
Beijing has sought to bolster its claims in the strategic waterways by building artificial islands in the area and building military outposts on them.
“In one and half years [in 2013 and 2014 under Xi’s administration], China has created more than 3,200 acres of territory. The other four claimant states have created only 100 acres in 45 years,” Jin said.
Jin predicted that the CCP would continue to create more features in the South China Sea.
He also boasted about the regime’s success in wresting control of the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 2012 with the help of Chinese fishing boats and coast guard vessels.
“Even if the Philippines wants the United States to take over the reefs [in the South China Sea], the United States can’t guard them,” Jin said. “If the United States stations an aircraft carrier there, China can simply send 2,000 fishing boats and surround the carrier. Then the carrier doesn’t dare to fire at the fishing boats.”
In relation to Taiwan, the CCP has more ways to bring the democratic island under its control, Jin said. The regime views the self-ruled island as part of its territory and has vowed to bring Taiwan under its fold with force if necessary. For instance, the regime could bribe Taiwanese politicians, ban trade and tourism from China, convince the few remaining countries that recognize Taiwan diplomatically to switch to China, blocking Taiwan’s participation in international organizations and meetings, and assassinating some Taiwanese to instill fear among the population.
3. Building Global Influence By Leading Projects
Xi’s global strategy to bolster the regime’s global power has two pillars, according to Jin. One is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the other is the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP).
BRI, previously known as One Belt One Road, is a massive global investment strategy launched by the CCP in 2013 aimed at bolstering its economic and political influence across Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America. The project involves investments in infrastructure and natural resource projects in countries. It has been criticized by the United States and other countries as an example of “debt trap” diplomacy, that saddles developing countries with unsustainable debt burdens while allowing the regime to export its technology and governance abroad.
“The ultimate purpose of BRI is to team up with the industrial power Germany. Then there’s no position of the United States in the world’s industrial playing field,” Jin said.
Similarly, Jin said the FTAAP, a proposed free trade agreement between 21 Asian-Pacific countries, would also open a conduit of influence for the CCP in the region.
The professor also believed that Chinese-backed development banks, the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, would work to Beijing’s advantage, as countries that received loans from the banks would then be beholden to the regime, Jin said.
“We are building up our friend’s circle in the world. We will be more powerful than the United States with more friends,” he said. “Then we can tell the United States that we are the only representative of the world.”
4. Influencing International Organizations
Jin also explained the CCP’s plan to exert greater influence over global bodies such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, Interpol, the International Monetary Fund, the International Olympic Committee, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The Chinese regime’s goal is for “all these international organizations to be controlled by China. We can appoint someone who speaks Chinese [who represents China] to be its leaders,” Jin said.
Chinese candidate to head the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Qu Dongyu addresses FAO members and delegates during the plenary assembly for the election of the new FAO Director-General held at the FAO headquarters, in Rome on June 22, 2019. (Vincenzo Pinto/ AFP via Getty Images)
During his speech, Jin emphasized that Xi was unlike his predecessors in his ambitions. Previous CCP leaders, such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao worked hard to develop the regime’s power but didn’t dare to use it, he said.
“No matter how much power you have, it’s nothing if you don’t dare to use it,” Jin said. “Chairman Xi dares to use it. [Xi’s authorities] have the power, dare to use that power, and all of its attacks make the other party bleed.”
Xi’s ambitions, however, cannot be revealed to the outside world, the professor said.
When Xi took power in 2012, he urged the country to realize the “Chinese dream.” This meant becoming a “moderately well-off” country by 2021, and then a “strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and modern socialist country” by 2049.
Jin explained that Xi’s target is actually to replace the United States as the world’s only superpower by 2049.
“[Chinese] Ministry of Foreign Affairs keeps on saying [at press briefings] that China loves peace. But no reporters at the press briefings believe this,” Jin said.
By dismissing the Chinese regime’s atrocities against the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority who live in Xinjiang in northwest China, as part of “different norms,” Biden could be plunging the world into an international crisis sooner than any of us could have imagined.
In 1968, the historian Will Durant wrote in his “Lessons of History,” that “War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 have seen no war.” Sadly, there has been a war somewhere in the world every year since.
Regardless of the luxuries in which Americans live, it remains true that, in every era, there are regimes that are barbaric or seek domination of their people and often the regions around them, if not more.
China is one such country. Recently, it was reported by the New York Post that “The State Department said it was ‘deeply disturbed’ by a report that claims Muslim women being held in Chinese re-education camps detaining millions of Uyghurs are being systematically raped, sexually abused and tortured.”
While not every atrocity can be remedied by the United States, none of them should be tolerated. All of them should be met by statements from our Commander in Chief that America aspires for freedom for everyone and that no atrocity can be justified or tolerated.
Beyond that, an administration should use diplomacy and economic sanctions at a minimum to confront the atrocities. Military intervention, while a last resort, should never be taken off the table.
With respect to China, a country that permits live organ harvesting, military intervention is not an option for those atrocities. Clear-eyed resolve, diplomacy, and sanctions, however, are a must.
All of which brings us to Joe Biden’s statement related to China and the Uyghurs. In a rambling response on national television, Biden first justified China’s abuses by saying:
“If you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been, the time when China has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home . . . So the central—well, vastly overstated—the central principle of [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China. And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that.”
He also said, “Culturally there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow.”
Atrocities are not justifiable norms and prior wrongs don’t justify current atrocities.
Not long after, the world was plunged into the Korean War after North Korea invaded South Korea in June of 1950. Many reasonably believe that Acheson’s statement that the United States’ sphere of concern, i.e. its defense perimeter, didn’t include what is South Korea today was a green light for North Korea, with the support of China and Russia, to invade South Korea.
Joe Biden’s comments just gave comfort to China that the United States won’t interfere in its domestic atrocities. The same words shall give comfort to Iran, Russia, and every dictator around the world—regardless of whether clarifying statements are made by the Administration in the days and weeks ahead.
God only knows what they will do with Biden’s green light.
The world, on the other hand, now knows just how weak Joe Biden is.
One lesson of history is that wars are started based on an adversary’s weakness and that is why the world will be living dangerously under Joe Biden.
Thomas Del Beccaro is an acclaimed author, speaker, Fox News, Fox Business, and Epoch Times opinion writer, and former chairman of the California Republican Party. He is the author of the historical perspectives “The Divided Era” and “The New Conservative Paradigm
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Birdpuk.com
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday scheduled several high-profile contest-of-election lawsuits, including ones brought by attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, and the Trump campaign, for consideration at its Feb. 19 conference.
All cases allege some form of unlawful election-related conduct affecting the result of the election, including expansion of mail-in balloting by elections officials changing rules in contravention of state election laws, lack of adequate security measures around mail ballots, issues with machine vote tabulation, and denial of meaningful access to poll watchers.
The Supreme Court declined to grant relief or fast-track the cases as requested in respective petitions filed ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden.
Powell’s Michigan petition (pdf) sought “emergency declaratory relief avowing that the presidential election results certified by Michigan officials were unconstitutional and otherwise contrary to law, together with injunctive relief de-certifying those results.”
Wood’s Georgia petition (pdf) asked the Supreme Court to “enter an emergency order instructing Respondents to de-certify the results of the General Election for the Office of the President.”
The Kelly petition (pdf) asked the court for an injunction “that prohibits the Executive-Respondents from taking official action to tabulate, compute, canvass, certify, or otherwise finalize the results of the Election.”
The Trump campaign suits similarly called for emergency injunctive relief in the form of expedited hearings and blocking certification of the electoral college votes for Biden.
Some of the lawyers in the cases said that seeing the challenges through is important as they could have an impact on long-term election fairness.
“Our legal issue remains important in need of the court’s review,” attorney John Eastman told the Washington Examiner, referring to Pennsylvania’s conduct during the 2020 election.
Greg Teufel, Kelly’s lawyer, told the Washington Examiner that the congressman has no intention of dropping the suit.
The Supreme Court has kept its distance from Trump’s election challenges. In December, it rejected a lawsuit filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas and backed by Trump seeking to decertify the election results in four states.
If, at the Feb. 19 conference, the Supreme Court decides to take up any of the election lawsuits, they most likely won’t be heard until October.
In a sweeping report on the integrity of the 2020 election, Trump adviser Peter Navarro concluded that the allegations of irregularities surrounding the vote in key battleground states were serious enough to warrant an urgent probe and substantial enough to potentially overturn the results.
“If these election irregularities are not fully investigated prior to Inauguration Day and thereby effectively allowed to stand, this nation runs the very real risk of never being able to have a fair presidential election again,” Navarro warned in his report.
Newly-elected Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Jan. 21 announced she has introduced articles of impeachment against the new president, Joe Biden.
The articles of impeachment concern Biden’s alleged actions involving a “quid pro quo” deal in Ukraine and alleged abuse of power “by allowing his son, Hunter Biden, to siphon off cash from America’s greatest enemies Russia and China,” Greene’s office announced in a statement just a day after Biden was sworn in as the 46th U.S. president.
The move comes less than a month into Greene’s first term in Congress. Democrats control both the House and Senate, so it is unlikely that the attempt to impeach Biden, a Democrat, will succeed.
“President Joe Biden is unfit to hold the office of the Presidency,” Greene said in a statement. “His pattern of abuse of power as President Obama’s Vice President is lengthy and disturbing. President Biden has demonstrated that he will do whatever it takes to bail out his son, Hunter, and line his family’s pockets with cash from corrupt foreign energy companies.”
She added, “President Biden is even on tape admitting to a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government threatening to withhold $1,000,000,000 in foreign aid if they did not do his bidding. President Biden residing in the White House is a threat to national security and he must be immediately impeached.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
Former Vice President Joe Biden (L) and his son Hunter Biden at the Duke Georgetown NCAA college basketball game in Washington on Jan. 30, 2010. (Nick Wass/AP Photo)
At an event in 2018, Biden said that in 2016 he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid from Ukraine unless then-President Petro Poroshenko fired Viktor Shokin. Shokin at the time was investigating Burisma, an energy company in Ukraine for which Hunter was a board member from 2014 to at least 2018.
Biden in 2016 was responsible for overseeing anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.
“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden recounted at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018. “Well, son of a [expletive], he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
Hunter Biden has said he consulted for Burisma but critics have suggested he was not doing actual work in return for his substantial income—an allegation he denies.
Biden previously denied using his influence to get Shokin fired to prevent him from investigating Hunter’s involvement. Biden claimed that the reason that Shokin was fired was because Shokin was inept.
In direct contrast to Biden’s claims, Shokin said in a sworn affidavit obtained by investigative reporter John Solomon that he was told that he was fired in March 2016 because Biden wasn’t pleased with the investigations into Burisma.
Greene alleges that Joe Biden abused his power as the country’s vice president by allowing his son “to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept various benefits—including financial compensation—from foreign nationals in exchange for certain favors.”
“During his father’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden built many business relationships with foreign nationals and received millions of dollars from foreign sources, seemingly in exchange for access to his father. The financial transactions which Hunter engaged in illustrates serious counterintelligence and extortion concerns relating to Hunter Biden and his family,” Greene’s office said.
“President Biden gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government. Through blatant nepotism, he enabled his son to influence foreign policy and financially benefit as a result of his role as Vice President.
“He supported his son engaging in collusion with Chinese Communist party-linked officials. He allowed his son to trade appointments with his father and other high-ranking administration officials in exchange for financial compensation. He permitted his son to take money from Russian oligarchs, including Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow,” it continued.
The New York Post last year obtained emails and messages from a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden, allegedly showing that he had tried to arrange a meeting between himself, his father, and a top executive at Burisma. Both Bidens have denied that a meeting took place, with Joe Biden saying that the story by the outlet was “another smear campaign.”
Other emails obtained by the outlet allegedly show that Hunter Biden was engaged in deals involving a Chinese energy giant with ties to the Chinese military–the now-bankrupt Chinese oil giant CEFC China Energy.
Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, announced during a press conference in Nashville in October 2020 that Hunter and his associates brought him into a deal with CEFC China Energy in 2017.
A federal appeals court in New York in late December 2020 upheld the bribery conviction of Patrick Ho, a Chinese businessman and the former head a think tank funded by CEFC China Energy.
Hunter is currently under federal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware over his taxes. The details and nature of the investigation have not been publicly disclosed. The office said it couldn’t comment on ongoing investigations.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a friend and adviser to Biden, said in December 2020 that Joe Biden will not interfere in the investigation. The then-president elect said that he was “confident” his son did nothing wrong, and later said that accusations against Hunter Biden are “foul play.”
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro listens to a news conference about a presidential executive order relating to military veterans outside of the West Wing of the White House in Washington, March 4, 2019. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
Peter Navarro, who serves as an advisor to President Donald Trump, on Thursday released a report, in his private capacity, on the integrity of the 2020 election, concluding that the allegations of irregularities are serious enough to warrant an urgent probe and substantial enough to overturn the results.
The findings of the report (pdf), titled “The Immaculate Deception,” support the claim that the election “may well have been stolen” from President Donald Trump.
“If these election irregularities are not fully investigated prior to Inauguration Day and thereby effectively allowed to stand, this nation runs the very real risk of never being able to have a fair presidential election again,” Navarro said in the report.
On a call with reporters explaining his findings, Navarro said his role in putting the report together is to say that, “the emperor, in the election, has no clothes.”
Fielding questions about what, at this stage, can be done, given that numerous legal challenges brought by the Trump campaign have been dismissed and the Electoral College has already voted, Navarro said, “with every day that goes by, it becomes more complicated” and “options narrow.”
Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, in a recent interview with The Epoch Times, said there’s still time for state legislatures to convene in special sessions and authorize alternate slates of electors.
While Navarro declined to specify a proposed remedy in light of his findings aside from a thorough investigation, he said, “the last thing this country needs is an Inauguration Day where we have what is perceived to be an illegal and illegitimate president of the United States.”
In making an urgent call for a probe of the allegations, Navarro argued that “if, in fact, compelling evidence comes to light proving the election was indeed stolen after a fait accompli Biden inauguration, we as a country run the very real risk that the very center of our great American union will not hold.”
In the report, Navarro examines six types of irregularities in the six battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—states in which certified results show Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s holding a lead and where the vote continues to be hotly contested.
Summary of findings regarding election irregularities in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Navarro said that the pattern of irregularities across the six states suggests “a coordinated strategy to, if not steal the election outright, strategically game the election process in such a way as to ‘stuff the ballot box’ and unfairly tilt the playing field in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket.”
He argues that the weight of the evidence, which comes from sources that include over 50 lawsuits and judicial rulings, thousands of affidavits and declarations, testimony in a variety of settings, think tank analyses, and press reports, is “more than sufficient to swing the outcome in favor of President Trump.”
Biden’s margin of victory in all the battleground states except Michigan is less than the number of ballots that Navarro flags as possibly illegal.
Rather than any single “silver bullet” of election irregularity responsible for an unfavorable outcome for Trump, Navarro argues that “this was theft by a thousand cuts across six dimensions and six battleground states.”
The list of actions that Navarro classifies as outright voter fraud include large-scale manufacturing of fake ballots, bribery, along with ballots cast by dead voters or ineligible voters like felons and illegal aliens. Others include ballots counted multiple times and those cast by illegal, out-of state voters.
Summary of findings regarding outright voter fraud in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Ballot Mishandling
Another major dimension of alleged irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, which Navarro calls a “multifaceted problem” that featured in five out of six of the battleground states, includes such factors as no voter ID checks, signature match check abuses, “naked ballots” that lack an outer envelope, and broken chain-of-custody records.
Summary of findings regarding ballot mishandling in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Contestable Process Fouls
The third dimension of election irregularities includes abuses regarding poll watchers and observers, such as denial of access or lack of meaningful access, as well as violations of state law in the area of mail-in and absentee ballots. It also includes illegal ballot curing by poll workers, and violations in voter registration procedures.
Summary of findings regarding contestable process fouls in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Equal Protection Clause Violations
The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution features the Equal Protection Clause, which mandates that no state may deny its citizens equal protection under the law. Questionable practices in this regard identified by Navarro include applying higher standards of certification and ID verification applied to in-person voters compared to mail-in and absentee balloting, and different standards of ballot curing for different counties.
Summary of findings regarding equal protection clause issues in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Voting Machine Irregularities
There were two major types of voting machine irregularities Navarro noted in the report: large-scale voting machine inaccuracies, as well as vote switching from one candidate to another and vote surges in favor of one candidate.
Summary of findings regarding voting machine irregularities in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
Significant Statistical Anomalies
The final category of irregularities detailed in Navarro’s report are statistical anomalies, which include such phenomena as significant changes in absentee ballot rejection rates compared to prior elections, and unusual vote surges.
Summary of findings regarding statistical anomalies in six battleground states. (Source: Data – The Immaculate Deception Report; Design – ET)
In concluding his report, Navarro argues that “the failure to aggressively and fully investigate” the irregularities he has flagged “signal a failure not just of our anti-Trump mainstream media and censoring social media but also of both our legislative and judicial branches.”
Since Election Day, Trump and third-party groups have pursued legal challenges to the outcome of the election in the six battleground states. None of the efforts have so far borne fruit, including an interstate Supreme Court challenge brought by Texas and backed by 19 Republican attorneys general.
An unprecedented “major leak” of official records has uncovered a register of 1.95 million members of the Chinese Communist Party, many of whom are now living and working all over the world, including Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The data lists names, party positions, date of birth, national identification number, ethnicity and — in some cases — their telephone number.
As reported by Australia’s Sky News on Sunday, the database “lifts the lid on how the party operates under President and Chairman Xi Jinping.” The leak “shows that party branches are embedded in some of the world’s biggest companies, and even inside government agencies,” the outlet reports.
“Communist party branches have been set up inside western companies, allowing the infiltration of those companies by CCP members — who, if called on, are answerable directly to the communist party, to the Chairman, the president himself,” said Sky News’ Sharri Markson.
“Along with the personal identifying details of 1.95 million communist party members, mostly from Shanghai, there are also the details of 79,000 communist party branches, many of them inside companies.”
Markson also inferred that this security breach would likely embarrass both Xi Jinping and “some global companies who appear to have no plan in place to protect their intellectual property from theft.”
According to the Daily Mail, communist party members swear an oath to “guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party, work hard, fight for communism throughout my life…and never betray the Party,” are “understood to have jobs in British consulates,” and that “Beijing’s malign influence now stretches into almost every corner of British life, including defence firms, banks and pharmaceutical giants.”
“Detailed analysis” has revealed that Pfizer and AstraZeneca employed 123 “party loyalists,” and that “there were more than 600 party members across 19 branches working at the British banks HSBC and Standard Chartered in 2016.” In addition, “firms with defence industry interests” like Airbus, Boeing and Rolls-Royce “employed hundreds of party members.”
In The Mail on Sunday, former British Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith wrote that this discovery “proves that members of the Chinese Communist Party are now spread around the globe, with members working for some of the world’s most important multinational corporations, academic institutions and our own diplomatic services.”
Concluding, Sky News’ Markson said that it “is worth noting that there’s no suggestion that these members have committed espionage — but the concern is over whether Australia or these companies knew of the CCP members and if so have any steps been taken to protect their data and people.”
A spokesperson for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a group “which comprises more than 150 legislators around the world who are concerned by the influence and activities of the Chinese government” — released a statement saying that a representative of the organization had “received this list from a non-governmental source, but was not in a position to verify it,” and that journalists had “since investigated and their findings are disturbing indeed.”
