Chinagate and the Clintons - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Chinagate and the Clintons
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When Senator Tim Kaine on Tuesday denied that there was any corruption at the Clinton Foundation, I couldn’t believe it. That was unquestionably one of the most dishonest things I ever seen in a presidential debate. Even Bill Clinton had promised that, if Hillary got elected, there would be no more foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Another reason I don’t believe Kaine is that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) illegally received foreign donations from China when Bill Clinton was president. This scandal was called Chinagate.

For people who think I am being unfair, I will only use links to liberal sources such as the New York Times and the Washington Post to prove my points.

Chinagate, more than any other scandal, should have led to the impeachment, and removal, of Bill Clinton from office. At least six individuals were believed to have been used by the Chinese to influence the 1996 elections. Despite the fact that the illegal donations were returned, Janet Reno was criticized for never appointing an independent prosecutor for the Chinagate scandal.

Here’s a quick overview of the six in question and their associates.

Johnny Chung
In 1996, then Senator John Kerry was in a tough re-election fight against Republican Governor Bill Weld. In July, Kerry met with businessman Johnny Chung and his Chinese partner Liu Chaoying. Johnny was born in Taiwan and later became an American citizen.

When John Kerry met with them in his Washington office, he had no idea that Liu Chaoying was a Lt. Colonel in the People’s Liberation Army.

Johnny Chung told Kerry that Liu wanted one of her companies listed on the Stock Exchange. Senator Kerry’s people were happy to help and immediately sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On September 9, 1996, Johnny Chung helped organize a fundraiser for Kerry in Beverly Hills. This was undoubtedly pay-for-play.

Around the same time, Liu Chaoying would wire $300,000 to Johnny Chung. Liu put that money into Chung’s Hong Kong bank account after she introduced him to Chinese General Ji Shengde.

Johnny Chung testified before Congress that in the summer of 1996, Ji Shengde told Chung, “We really like your president. We hope he will get reelected.… I will give you 300,000 U.S. dollars. You can give it to… your president and Democrat Party.”

Chung used most of that money to pay for his business expenses and sent the remaining $35,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Shortly after Chung’s testimony, Ji Shengde was reassigned from the head of Chinese military intelligence to the Academy of Military Science. In the United States, that would be the equivalent of the head of the NSA being reassigned to teach political science at a university.

Beyond the $35,000 from the Chinese government, the DNC was forced to return all of the money that Chung had donated to them ($366,000).

There is no way that this money could have been authorized without the full knowledge of the Chinese government. Liu Chaoying was the daughter of General Liu Huaqing (1916-2011). In China, the sons and daughters of important government officials are known as taizidang or princelings. They use their connections to allow businessmen access to China. They would never risk their family’s privileged status especially when there are many other profitable deals with less political risk.

At the time Liu Chaoying was giving money to Johnny Chung, her father was serving as the Vice Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission. General Liu was a dedicated communist. He participated in the Long March with Mao. He would later be regarded as the “father of the modern Chinese Navy.”

In 1982-1987, he was the commander of the People’s Liberation Army Navy. From 1992 to 1997, he was on the Politburo Standing Committee as well as the Vice Chairman of the China’s Central Military Commission.

Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping honored General Liu’s accomplishments in honor of his 100th birthday. In his obituary (he died in 2011 at 94), the New York Times mentioned General Liu’s accomplishments in modernizing the Chinese Navy, but did not mention his daughter’s role in transferring money to the Democratic National Committee.

Johnny Chung first met the Clintons in 1992. From 1994 to 1996, Chung visited the White House 49 times. Nearly half of those visits were authorized by the office of the First Lady. In one visit, Hillary met with Chung and his visiting delegation of Chinese businessmen from state-run companies.

In one visit, Chung paid the DNC $50,000. In exchange, Chung was allowed to bring some of his investors to see the president deliver one of his radio addresses.

John Huang, Mochtar Riady, and James Riady
In 1996, John Huang would raise $3.4 million for the Democratic Party. More than half of this money was returned because some of these donations were foreign.

In 1980, John Huang met Mochtar Riady at an event in Little Rock, Arkansas. The featured speaker was then-Governor Bill Clinton. Riady’s son, James, would later hire Huang at one of his companies. At the same time, Huang would serve as a fundraiser for Clinton’s 1992 campaign. He became an expert in fundraising among different Asian-American communities.

In late 1993, Clinton appointed Huang to serve as deputy assistant secretary for international economic affairs at the Commerce Department. Huang got a severance package of $750,000 from the Lippo Group (below). In 1995, Clinton recommended him to work at the DNC.

In 1996, approximately $1 million in donations to the Democrats were from people with close ties to the Lippo Group. One of them was Hashim Ning who was a business partner with the Riady family. Hashim sent $500,000 to his daughter Soraya and his son-in-law Arief Wiriadinata. From November 1995 to July 1996, they donated $450,000 to the DNC.

Mochtar Riady was the son of Chinese immigrants who came from modest circumstances and founded the Lippo Group, a conglomerate in real estate, insurance, and banking. By 1996, the company had over $12 billion in assets.

Mochtar had three sons. The youngest was James and he first met Bill Clinton in the late 1970s. He contributed money to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. The Lippo Group had many projects in China. A peaceful and stable U.S.-China relationship was in the interests of the Lippo Group.

In its report in 1998, the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs noted that both Mochtar and James Riady “have had a long-term relationship with a Chinese intelligence agency.” James Riady was also in the Oval Office on September 13, 1995 when Bill Clinton authorized the transfer of Huang to the DNC. In September 1996, James Riady was again in the Oval Office with Clinton lobbying for better trade relations with China.

According to White House logs, James Riady visited the White House 20 times and met with President Clinton on six of those visits. At the time, Clinton’s top aide, Bruce Lindsey, tried to spin that Riady’s visits were social calls. It was only after the election that White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry admitted that the meetings involved substantive conversations, including about American foreign policy in Asia.

Ted Sioeng
In 1997, Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, CIA Director George J. Tenet and NSA Director Kenneth A. Minihan testified before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee about Ted Sioeng. They claimed to have credible information that this Los Angeles-based Chinese Indonesian businessman intended to influence the 1996 elections. Through family members and his businesses, he donated $250,000 to the DNC. This money was returned.

Maria Hsia
After the 1988 election, Al Gore met Maria Hsia who organized a trip for him to Taiwan. She would later help with his campaigns, including the 1996 campaign. According to the Justice Department, Hsia raised $100,000 in illegal contributions for the Clinton-Gore 1996 campaign. Since foreigners could not provide donations to the campaign, she used monks and nuns at the Hsi Lai Temple as straw donors. The donors that were citizens used the monks in order to give beyond their contribution limits. Hsia had strong ties to Huang and Riady.

Yah Linh “Charlie” Trie and Ng Lap Seng
Charlie Trie owned a restaurant in Little Rock that was frequented by his friend then-Governor Bill Clinton. After Clinton won the presidency, Trie went to Washington to cash out on their friendship. He thought his association could help him develop more business contacts in Asia. One of them was Hong Kong businessman Ng Lap Seng. Seng would wire a million dollars to Trie. From 1994 to 1996, Trie directly sent $200,000 to the DNC. Trie provided the rest of the money to other people who later sent that money to the DNC. Trie also helped raised another $640,000 for Bill Clinton’s Legal Defense Fund.

According to the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, 94 people were called to testify, including the six people in this article. Of the 94, 57 invoked the Fifth Amendment, 18 fled the country, and 19 foreign witnesses refused to testify. Here is a link to the full list.

Bill and Hillary Clinton continued this pattern of getting foreign donations from unethical businessmen with the Clinton Foundation. If they get into office, there is truly no line Bill and Hillary Clinton won’t cross.

For all the condemnation about Trump’s tax returns, remember that Trump obeyed the law. If you don’t like the law, change it. The Clintons didn’t bother to change campaign finance laws. Laws were broken in the Chinagate scandal.

Tim Kaine and other Democrats want to argue that Donald Trump would be a puppet of Putin when it was Bill Clinton who received speaking fees abroad from the Russians and plenty of other countries.

Bill Clinton was a paid $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow after Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved a deal that gave the Russians control of one-fifth of America’s uranium capacity. When the state-run Rosatom bought Uranium One, Hillary should have said that Ian Telfer, the chairman of Uranium One, donated $2.35 million dollars that made its way to the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation failed to disclose this donation.

Trump saying nice things about Putin is not the same as giving Russia one-fifth of our uranium reserves. After more than twenty years of watching the Clintons, there can be no other conclusion that their capacity for corruption is limitless. Chinagate was brazen enough, but since then they’ve never looked back.

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