In a lengthy expose in Yahoo News, Michale Isikoff, previously an investigative correspondent for NBC, as well as a staff writer for Newsweek and The Washington Post, and Zach Dorfman, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, detail how Hunter Biden’s under-reported financial ties to Communist China pose a serious counterintelligence risk to the United States.
There’s “no doubt Hunter presents CI [counterintelligence] vulnerabilities,” says a former senior FBI official, they now report.
The former FBI official added, “if Trump’s children such as Donald Trump Jr. or Eric Trump were doing the same things, many more people would be howling.”
Isikoff and Dorfman write:
…the depth and breadth of the Bidens’ financial ties with Ho and Ye [Hunter’s Chinese business partners targeted by the FBI] raise new questions as to whether they were targets of a Chinese influence operation that, separate and apart from an ongoing criminal probe into Hunter Biden for alleged tax fraud and potentially foreign lobbying violations, represents a counterintelligence threat.
And the reporters even bring in another former senior FBI counterintelligence official who earlier shamelessly dismissed the Hunter laptop and the Bidens’ foreign intelligence connections:
“There’s no question that Chinese intelligence services look for every possible opportunity to get close to family members of high-ranking officials,” said Frank Figliuzzi, former chief of the FBI’s counterintelligence division. In the past, Figliuzzi had expressed skepticism about stories in conservative media about Hunter Biden. But now, he adds, “I believe that the information we’ve learned is something that merits a review by the counterintelligence arm of the FBI.”
What is worse, the reporters admit, is that Hunter Biden knew of the serious dangers posed by his Chinese partners:
…there are indications that Hunter Biden had good reason to suspect the Chinese intelligence connections of Ho and Ye. In a May 11, 2018, audio recording of a conversation with an unidentified woman found on the laptop, a copy of which has been obtained by Yahoo News, Hunter Biden complained about getting a phone call from a New York Times reporter asking about his representation of Ho. He is “literally the f***ing spy chief of China,” Biden says to the woman, clearly overstating Ho’s role.
And yes, while this is now news to the establishment media, it’s not news to those of us who have been reporting on this for almost two years. I wrote about it here in October 2020.
As Isikoff and Dorfman note, “Although many of the details have circulated in conservative media circles for some time, they were largely ignored by mainstream news organizations…”
But the bottom line Isikoff and Dorfman note is that:
Emails on a damaged laptop that Hunter Biden left at a computer repair store in Wilmington, Del.,…. bank records and other documents uncovered by Senate Republican investigators, reveal a high-dollar money trail that flowed from Chinese interests to Hunter Biden and his uncle James which now appears to be at the heart of an ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation.
But the Chinese counterintelligence threat isn’t only with the Biden family, the reporters also remind us of the long-term effort by Chinese intelligence to penetrate mostly Democrat political circles in the United States:
…Chinese political influence schemes in the U.S. go back decades. In the 1990s, a campaign finance scandal known as “Chinagate” erupted over illicit donations by Chinese backers with ties to the country’s intelligence service to the Democratic National Committee and Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign.
More recently, suspected Chinese agents have tried to sidle up to prominent politicians including California Democrats Sen.Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Eric Swalwell, prompting the FBI to give both lawmakers a “defensive briefing.” (After being alerted by the bureau, Feinstein fired the staffer alleged to be working for Chinese intelligence. Swalwell cut his ties to the suspected Chinese agent who had been raising money for his campaign.)
Stay tuned, as the newfound media interest in Hunter Biden’s laptop and the close ties between the Bidens and Communist China may be opening a whole new chapter into the investigation of this ongoing Chinese influence operation targeting the Democrat Party.
This article originally appeared in American Liberty News. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of The Republican Standard.
