University at Heart of Biden Classified Docs Scandal Received Millions from Chinese - House Committee Demands Answers
President Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal is giving new meaning to an old political phrase.
“Follow the money” has been a storyline of American political scandal going back at least as far as Richard Nixon’s Watergate a half-century ago.
Now, in a letter on Wednesday, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee wants to follow the fundraising for the think tank where the Biden documents were first found.
In the strongly worded message, Kentucky Rep. James Comer demanded University of Pennsylvania President Mary Elizabeth Magill turn over documents “related to foreign influence at UPenn and the Penn Biden Center.”
The letter set a deadline of Feb. 1 for Magill to respond.
The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement opened in Washington in February 2018, more than a year after Biden left the vice presidency at the end of the second Obama administration. It’s also where the first tranche of classified documents was found in early November — documents that had no business being outside of the government’s possession for a single day, much less five years.
As Comer’s letter noted, the Oversight Committee is particularly interested in donations to establish the Penn Biden Center.
“The Committee has learned UPenn received tens of millions of dollars from anonymous Chinese sources, with a marked uptick in donations when then-former Vice President Biden was announced as leading the Penn Biden Center initiative,” the congressman wrote.
“UPenn publicized the formation of the Penn Biden Center on February 1, 2017. After that announcement, UPenn’s donations originating from China more than tripled.”
As if the implicit accusation wasn’t enough — that the former vice president and an Ivy League university had teamed up to go on the take for Chinese cash — Comer’s letter made it clear that his committee is investigating whether Biden had put elements of the presidency itself up for sale — with Penn’s assistance.
“Not only were these donations made while President Biden explored a potential run for president and launched his campaign, but also as his family and associates pursued lucrative financial projects with partners in China,” he wrote.
“The American people deserve to know whether the Chinese Communist Party, through Chinese companies, influenced potential Biden Administration policies with large, anonymous donations to UPenn and the Penn Biden Center. “
In the letter, Comer was formalizing suspicions he aired last week in a Fox News interview. And as Fox News reported in April, a watchdog group raised similar questions about Chinese funding for the think tank.
At the time, the University of Pennsylvania issued a statement denying foreign funds were sought for the Penn Biden Center itself.
“The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity,” the statement said. “In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center. Since its inception in 2017 there have been three unsolicited gifts (from two donors) which combined total $1,100. Both donors are Americans. One hundred percent of the budget for the Penn Biden Center comes from University funds.”
That may well be true — it’s also irrelevant. Money is fungible.
According to a New York Post report last week, Penn received more than $30 million in donations from Chinese sources after the Penn Center was announced. So the checks didn’t have notes in the memo field saying “for the Penn Biden Center” or “to buy influence in the next U.S. presidency” — that doesn’t mean a thing.
Comer’s letter also detailed how Penn had acted as a “foreign-sponsored source of income for much of a Biden Administration in-waiting.”
Not only was Biden himself given a cushy “job” worth almost $1 million, but numerous figures who became part of his administration were parked at the Penn Center pending Biden’s return to office.
Comer’s letter also basically called Biden a liar for his repeated denials of any knowledge of his son Hunter’s business activities — denials that have basically been destroyed by the revelations on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“Contrary to what he has told the American people, while Vice President and during his tenure at the Penn Biden Center, President Biden met with his family’s international business partners. Robert Hunter Biden, the President’s son, may have had access to the classified documents found at the President’s Delaware home since he listed it as his home address as recently as 2018 and planned to share office space with an individual affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party,” the congressman wrote.
Comer Letter by The Western Journal
This is serious stuff.
However much Democrats and their bootlickers in the establishment try to downplay it (NBC’s Chuck Todd is just one of the more odious examples), signs keep building that President Joe Biden, his family and his network of support are contaminated with foreign influences — contaminated to the point of being thoroughly corrupted.
In a United States that had a national media that was even close to honest, the whole country would already be aware of it. The notorious video of Biden bragging about how, as vice president in 2016, he’d withheld $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer aid from the government of Ukraine until it fired a prosecutor looking into the energy firm that employed his son has been public news since long before the 2020 election. Ask any liberals you know if they’re aware of it.
In 2019 and 2020, then-President Donald Trump warned about that potential corruption repeatedly — and got impeached for his pains by a warped Democratic House of Representatives when it came to his warnings about the Biden family’s activities in Ukraine.
Now, the president of the university founded by Benjamin Franklin is on the receiving end of a letter from the House Oversight Committee all but accusing the school of being party to a scheme to sell out the country to its most dangerous global rival.
This isn’t Nancy Pelosi & Co. cynically combining malice and lies trying to cripple with malice the administration of a president who’d upended the traditional Washington power structure.
This isn’t the manifestly corrupt FBI orchestrating a smear of a chief executive it had spied on and betrayed for political purposes.
It’s not an establishment media-facilitated hoax aimed at convincing Americans their president was in hock to a foreign government based largely on a “dossier” that was an utter fabrication.
Suspicions about corruption in the Biden family were growing even before Hunter’s laptop burst on the scene with its details of deals (and a cut for the “big guy.”)
With every drip of new revelation, they get stronger.
Thanks to the November midterms, Republicans are armed with subpoena powers now to “follow the money” as far as it goes. And that could go straight to the 2024 presidential election.
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