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    Biden Stashed Highly Classified Docs at Beach Home Garage, Next to ‘Corvette TS/SCI’

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    9
    Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    ANALYSIS – Yes, Donald Trump took scores of highly classified materials to his home at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, but at least he didn’t stash them next to his old sports car in a garage.  

    Mar-a-Lago is also protected by the Secret Service.

    Meanwhile, Joe Biden may be the only POTUS to own a very sweet, racing green, 1967 Chevy Corvette Stingray – TS/SCI Edition.

    Who knows what’s in the glove compartment?

    The latest find by government investigators has shown former Vice President Biden apparently took a second batch of highly classified materials after leaving office in 2017 and stashed them in his Delaware beach home’s garage.

    The first batch found in a closet of a private office in DC Biden used relating to his shady relationship with the Penn Biden Center, including Top Secret/SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) which requires extraordinary security measures to protect.

    In fact, since they include intelligence sources and methods (people and processes) they must only be viewed, used, or discussed in a highly secure Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF).

    As far as we know, Biden’s garage where he keeps his Corvette is not a SCIF.

    But that didn’t keep Biden from arguing his garage was still somehow secure, because, well, it is locked.

    In the White House’s South Court Auditorium, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked the president, “Classified materials next to your Corvette? What were you thinking?”

    “My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden responded. 

    “People know I take classified documents and classified materials seriously.”

    Ummm… LOL. 

    Of course, you do, Joe. And we take you seriously as well.

    Continuing the patterns denial and obfuscation, on Wednesday, Doocy, along with other White House correspondents, had a tense encounter with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the classified documents. 

    “On these documents, how could anyone be that irresponsible?,” Doocy asks, reiterating Biden’s question about Donald Trump after boxes of classified documents were found in former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year.

    Despite the barrage of intense questions about the documents over the past two days, Jean-Pierre has frustrated reporters by repeatedly dodging the questions.

    The Blaze reported:

    CBS anchors Errol Barnett and Lana Zak slammed Jean-Pierre for having “not answered a single question” about the discovery of the documents.

    “For a second straight day now, the White House struggling to answer any questions related to classified documents discovered at locations associated with President Biden, citing Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary, simply reading a statement, where she says the president was surprised by the discovery, takes this matter very seriously, the documents were inadvertently misplaced, and he doesn’t know what’s in them,” Barnett began.

    “She has not answered a single question outside of a prewritten statement by the president’s lawyers,” he said.

    Thankfully, reporters are now directly questioning Team Biden’s narrative about being “transparent” and forthcoming about the classified documents.

    One big question that also remains unanswered is why Biden failed until now, to disclose the finding of the first batch of his mishandled classified documents, which occurred not long after the unprecedented August FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and only days before the 2022 midterm election in November.

    Hopefully, many other unanswered questions, such as did Biden use any of this classified material while writing his 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad,” will be addressed soon.

    According to an order signed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland has appointed Robert K. Hur as special counsel, a veteran prosecutor, to examine “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records discovered” at Mr. Biden’s think tank in Washington and his residence in Wilmington, Del. 

    But this independent counsel should not preclude the media and the GOP-led House from continuing to push for the full truth on this issue.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Is Vivek Ramaswamy The GOP’s New Trump ‘Lite’?

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    13
    Vivek Ramaswamy speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

    ANALYSIS- Who is this skinny guy with the funny-sounding name? (That was his opening line at the debate). Vivek Ramaswamy wasn’t supposed to be at the center of the first Republican presidential candidate debate in Milwaukee.

    Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the viable GOP alternative to Donald Trump. A two-term governor of the third most populous state in the union, DeSantis, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq, is as conservative as they come.

    And he has a proven track record of fighting the left in Florida – and winning.

    But despite his solid bona fides and resume, DeSantis has a personality problem. He just doesn’t exude charm or confidence, and that’s hurting him – a lot.

    Meanwhile, Ramaswamy the 38-year-old Trump-defending, Cincinnati-born, biotech billionaire (worth at least $950 million), son of Pakistani immigrants, kind of stole the show at the debate.

    According to former FBI agent and body language expert, Joe Navarro: “[Ramaswamy] consistently looked the most comfortable on stage.”

    He was also the most openly and unabashedly pro-Trump. He was the first candidate to raise their hand when asked who would support the former President as the party nominee even if he is convicted on felony charges that he’s facing.

    He has also promised to pardon Trump if elected. But he went even farther than that.

    “President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century,” Ramaswamy said in a clip from the debate Trump posted on Truth Social.

    And Trump loved it.

    “This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH. Thank you, Vivek!”

    The ever-smiling political newbie Ramaswamy, who seemed to be having a blast on stage, was also the target of many of his GOP rivals.

    As TIME reported:

    Maybe it was Ramaswamy’s consistent and confounding defense of All Things Trump. Maybe it was his smooth talk and culture-war acumen. Maybe it was just the fact that Ramaswamy frankly does not care how things were done before and might just have enough self-made money to go the distance.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie snarled that he had “had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” an A.I. battery. He then dismissed Ramaswamy as someone on the same level as a political figure universally loathed in the GOP. “The last person in one of these debates… who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What is a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama. And I am afraid we are dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight,” Christie said.

    But the quick witted Ramaswamy’s riposte to Christie was a zinger: “Give me a hug like you did to Obama, and you’ll help elect me just like you did to Obama. Give me the damn hug, brother.”

    Ramaswamy was referring to the 2012 incident when Christie was accused of “hugging” Obama during his visit in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy which hit days before the 2012 presidential election.

    It’s a claim that Christie has been denying since then, saying: “I didn’t hug him.”

    Photos at the time seem to back up Christie, but the zinger still worked.

    Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN under Trump, and ex-South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, who is of Indian descent, hit Ramaswamy too: “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

    I would agree with that assessment and believe he has made a few deeply flawed important national security statements – including on Ukraine and Israel.

    But he is super smart and can learn quickly.

    Then Vice President Mike Pence took a Christie-like jab at Ramaswamy, attacking the very same quality that originally helped raise Trump in the GOP base – that he is not a politician.

    “Now it’s not the time for on-the-job training,” retorted Pence. “We don’t need to bring in a rookie. We don’t need to bring in people with no experience.”

    AS TIME noted: “Attacks during debates are the norm but this was different. Ramaswamy’s competitors really don’t like him. Not even a little.”

    However, there is one important GOP rival who seems to like Ramaswamy – Donald Trump. And that could be all that matters.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: Who’s Your Pick For 2024 – Trump or DeSantis?

    By
    Amanda Head
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    6

    As Americans continue to wait for official midterm results to trickle in Republicans are already diving themselves into two camps: Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump.

    Who are you siding with?

    Watch Amanda break it down below.

    Amanda Head: Top LA Lawyer Warns Of Hollywood’s Future

    By
    Amanda Head
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    1
    Austin Green, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

    Will the Screen Actor’s Guild writing stroke be the beginning of the end of Hollywood as we know it?

    Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    North Dakota AG Sounds Off on Concerns Facing His State

    By
    Matt Whitaker
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    1
    Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley joins Liberty & Justice to discusses challenges facing his state and the United States of America.

    Per Matt Whitaker:

    Drew Wrigley is a fourth generation North Dakotan with family roots in Walsh County and Burke County, where Wrigley Brothers Farm still thrives. Wrigley was born in Bismarck and grew up in Fargo. After graduating from Fargo South High School in 1984, Wrigley attended the University of North Dakota, graduating in 1988 with honors in economics and philosophy. He graduated from the American University, Washington College of Law, in 1991, followed by a year-long judicial clerkship in Delaware. Wrigley then worked as an Assistant District Attorney for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, prosecuting every variety of crime in one of our nation’s most violent cities.

    Wrigley and his wife Kathleen married in 1998 and moved home to North Dakota. In 2001, Wrigley was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate as North Dakota’s 17th United States Attorney. Wrigley led his office’s successful efforts to combat violent crime, large-scale narcotics trafficking, illegal immigration, financial fraud and ground-breaking investigations focused on Internet crimes against children. Under Wrigley’s leadership, the office’s Civil Division worked diligently to promote and protect legal and contractual interests of the United States, while battling to ensure the protection of civil rights and the promise of landmark legal protections such as the Americans with Disabilities Act. Even while serving as United States Attorney, Wrigley personally tried several noteworthy cases, including North Dakota’s first federal Internet child-luring case, and the successful death penalty prosecution of Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr., who kidnapped, assaulted, and viciously murdered University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin. That was North Dakota’s first and only federal death penalty case, for which Wrigley served as lead trial and appellate counsel. From 2004 to 2009, Wrigley was appointed by three successive Attorney Generals of the United States to serve on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, a select group of United States Attorneys tasked with advising the Attorney General of the United States and other Department of Justice leaders.

    After stepping down as United States Attorney in 2009, Wrigley served as vice-president of a national Medicare and Medicaid contractor based in Fargo. He subsequently served as North Dakota’s 37th Lieutenant Governor, from December 2010 through December 2016. Wrigley served as the President of the State Senate, chaired the State Investment Board and its oversight of then-$11 billion in pension and other state assets, chaired the state’s International Trade Office Board, chaired the Governor’s Cybersecurity Task Force, and led the economic development efforts and oversight authority for North Dakota’s FAA-sanctioned unmanned flight systems testing facility. In 2016, Wrigley and Governor Jack Dalrymple chose to not seek re-election, and in early 2017 Wrigley once again returned to the private sector, serving in a senior advisory role for a regional healthcare, insurance, research and philanthropy enterprise, Sanford Health. In 2019, Wrigley was nominated by President Donald J. Trump and confirmed by the United States Senate as North Dakota’s 19th United States Attorney, becoming the first North Dakotan to twice serve as our state’s chief federal law enforcement officer. Wrigley stepped down in February of 2021 and worked as counsel with his family’s industrial/mechanical/commercial contracting firms, Wrigley Mechanical, Inc. and BDT Mechanical LLC, both located in Fargo. Wrigley maintains an ownership interest in both companies.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Biden’s Lies About Hunter’s Foreign Influence Peddling Are About To Blow Up In His Face

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    6
    President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

    ANALYSIS – Where there’s smoke there’s fire. And there is a lot of smoke surrounding Joe and Hunter Biden. It is increasingly clear that Joe Biden has repeatedly lied about his involvement in, and knowledge of, his son Hunter’s overseas influence peddling businesses.

    And with Biden’s Department of Justice (DoJ) and FBI dragging their feet with documents requested by congressional investigators, an official impeachment inquiry may be the only way to get to the truth.

    And that official inquiry may be coming very soon.

    Republicans could open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden over ties to his son Hunter’s shady and unethical business entanglements when Congress reconvenes on September 12.

    In the final presidential debate of the 2020 U.S. election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden, moderator Kristen Welker asked Biden: “there have been questions about the work your son has done in China and for a Ukrainian energy company when you were vice president; in retrospect, was anything about those relationships inappropriate or unethical?”

    “Nothing was unethical. My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China,” Biden replied.

    Biden also said he never discussed business with his son.

    Well, to put it in Biden terms, that was all a bunch of malarkey.

    Now, nearly three years later, Hunter has rebutted Joe Biden’s assertions directly. In court testimony in late June, Hunter acknowledged that he had been paid substantial sums in China – the first official confirmation that this was the case.

    This direct contradiction creates a major problem for the White House, and Republicans insist there’s a lot more to find out.

    “A lot of the things the president said about his family’s shady business dealings, we’re proving every day that they’re not true,” Republican James Comer, Chair of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, said.

    An impeachment inquiry is the next logical step to find out what is true.

    The Epoch Times (ET) reported: “House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that initiating an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden would be a ‘natural step forward.’” This, following unresolved questions from the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s investigations into the Biden family’s business dealings.

    The speaker said on Monday that the impeachment inquiry could start soon. McCarthy added that an impeachment inquiry would provide Congress “the apex of legal power to get all the information they need” to investigate whether President Biden misused his office to assist family businesses.

    ET continued:

    McCarthy said on Monday that the inquiry was needed to overcome stonewalling of congressional investigators looking for transparency about the Biden family’s business records following testimony from former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer that President Biden met with son Hunter Biden’s business partners during the time he was vice president, as well as concerns raised by whistleblowers at the IRS regarding Hunter Biden’s tax records.

    The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has so far subpoenaed six different banks, receiving thousands of bank records of businesses and individuals connected to Joe Biden’s family members.

    According to ET:

    Those records showed that more than $20 million in payments from foreign sources have been made to the president’s relatives, including Hunter Biden, and their business associates while Mr. Biden was acting as U.S. vice president from 2009 to 2017.

    Romanian, Chinese, and Russian nationals were among those making payments to the Biden family and their associates. The records also revealed that the funds were funneled through a network of at least 20 shell companies before being transferred to Biden family members.

    An inquiry doesn’t mean the House will impeach Biden. But it does give Republicans far more legal power to force reluctant Biden DoJ bureaucrats and others to come forward with the truth.

    The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.

    Surge In Youth Mob Violence Reported Across US

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    7
    Police image via Pixabay free images

    ANALYSIS – The aftershocks from radical leftist movements, and the corresponding soft-on-crime approach of prosecutors across the country, is largely to blame for the current wave of lawlessness in many American cities.

    Sadly, it appears that most of the crime is being committed by mobs of teenagers in disadvantaged communities.

    I have recently written about the skyrocketing murder rate and carjackings in our nation’s capital here. I didn’t note then that much of that violent crime in Washington, D.C. is committed by young people. Some as young as 13.

    But frightening incidents of youth-led mob violence in two other cities graphically show how bad things really are.

    The Blaze reported that in what may be America’s most violent city: “Scores of thugs swarmed two Memphis gas stations over the weekend, stealing thousands of dollars of merchandise and destroying property. Looters also hit a 53-foot FedEx semi-trailer, stealing multiple packages.”

    Murders in Memphis are up 77% this year and on track to set an all-time city record.

    Some blame Steve Mulroy the city’s new soft-on crime Democrat district attorney, others, such as the mayor, blame soft-on crime courts. I would say it is likely both.

    Whichever is most to blame, James Davis, owner of L.R. Clothier, whose business was broken into early Sunday morning, said: “What this says to me is that people don’t fear any repercussions of their actions.”

    And that sums it up, as can be seen in the video below.

    The Blaze continued:

    Roughly $2,000 of items were stolen from the Exxon at 3483 Airways Boulevard. Over $15,000 of merchandise was taken from the Fill-N-Go gas station at 3084 South Third Street just hours later, where a clerk reported having a rifle pointed at him by a suspect. The mob is estimated to have inflicted $9,000 in damage at the second location.

    Footage of one of the incidents shows a mob of looters, some masked and others bare faced, ransacking a gas station and absconding with everything from candy to an electric sign. One hooded figure taking his time deciding which chocolate bars to load into his sagging pants can be seen carrying around a rifle. Another masked figure grabbing a handful of loot appears to be an adolescent girl.

    Clerks and paying customers look on in disbelief as the looters pilfer without any fear of consequence.

    The outlet added: “In what appears to have been a coordinated effort, drivers blocked a FedEx truck in the middle of Riverport Road and Mallory Avenue around 8:30 p.m., affording masked men an opportunity to break into the trailer and steal multiple packages.”

    But as scary as this ‘purge’ like behavior is in Memphis (referring to the movies where all crime, including murder, is allowed one day a year), the recent incident in Las Vegas is even worse.

    There a teenage boy, Jonathan Lewis Jr., was brutally beaten to death by 15 teens in broad daylight.

    Video of the brutal attack emerged on social media last week, showing the teen being savagely pummeled as he tried to run away.

    [His father, Jonathan] Lewis Sr. said he believes the deadly onslaught began after “Jonathan stood up for one of his smaller friends,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

    “A couple (of people) attacked him, and they weren’t able to hurt him enough, and they all attacked him at once,” the dad stated.

    Lewis Sr. remembered his son as a “loving, giving, kind, fierce young man who loved community and caring for others.” He added that “his son was an aspiring artist who was considering joining the military like his grandfather – who served in the U.S. Navy.”

    Another article in The Blaze noted that:

    While the victim’s family tries to process his death, others are puzzling over why this violent episode has not elicited the kind of national response other racially dichotomous incidents have in recent years.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Universities Training Gen Z to be Woke Snitches and to Punish Speech

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    1

    ANALYSIS – It is becoming sadly clear that this may be the last generation of any real freedom in America as Generation Z (Gen Z or Zoomers) increasingly supports the surveillance and punishment state. Many are also exhibitionists craving 24-7 attention.

    As I wrote about earlier – Gen Z ‘loves Big Brother.’ Big Brother is the term used by George Orwell to describe the totalitarian surveillance state in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984).

    In that piece, I noted a CATO Institute poll that showed 30 percent of people under 30 support allowing the government to install video cameras in our homes to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.”

    And we can blame a lot of that on the far-l*ft w*ke culture at our colleges and universities.

    It’s bad enough that many of this generation is willing to let faceless bureaucrats watch us in our homes, but Zoomers appear willing to go beyond even that. They are the generation of snitches, and punishers, going after anyone they disagree with.

    This generation has been taught to equate ‘unapproved’ speech with actual violence, so it makes sense that they’ll do whatever it takes to eliminate it. 

    Much of this can be traced back to higher education. Our colleges and schools are teaching our kids to be hypersensitive, ideological, w*ke snitches. 

    After providing various scary examples, including one where a professor used the oft-used term “sacred cow,” and a student filed a complaint that said the student would “not feel safe around him” any longer, Christian Schneider writes in National Review:

    …part of the reason Gen Z has an unquenchable thirst for surveillance is what they are being taught at their colleges and universities. All the above examples were reports filed with campus “Bias Response Teams” — programs set up by institutions of higher education that incentivize students to narc on each other for expressing unpopular opinions or engaging in disfavored behavior.

    Decades ago, courts threw out college “speech codes,” finding that public universities banning language was impermissible under the First Amendment. So when the internet grew as a tool, schools crafted a workaround: What if, instead of the schools targeting students for unpopular speech, it was the students themselves doing the targeting? And thus a majority of public colleges and universities began crowdsourcing their speech codes.

    In fact, bias-response teams are actually worse than the traditional speech codes, which outlawed specific words: The new standard for determining whether speech is forbidden is simply anything that offends someone. Any oversensitive campus resident now has the power to log on and anonymously report a fellow student or professor.

    Not to be outdone by its elite competitors, Stanford University implemented its own Orwellian system in which the school offered students a cash bounty if they reported insensitive speech on campus. In April, the school backtracked on the plan after an ensuing episode of national outrage.

    You can’t get much more Orwellian than that. 

    But there is a big added factor in why this generation loves surveillance, “cameras are what young people now seek, hoping to parlay their everyday goings-on into a Kardashian-like media empire.”

    Schneider notes that one poll found that nearly one-quarter of Zoomers in the United States planned to be internet ‘influencers,’ making their living creating videos for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. 

    Apparently, we no longer need doctors, engineers, scientists, or lawyers (well, maybe not so many lawyers).

    I don’t know about you, but a nation of empty-headed TikTok influencers scares me almost more than the Orwellian surveillance they like so much.

    Schneider adds: “Today’s young people have become both informers and self-exposers. If we’re not careful, their snitch culture will threaten privacy and freedom.” 

    I would go further. If we aren’t careful, very soon, America, as a free country, will be totally unrecognizable.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: Hollywood Star Blasts Covid Inc!

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    1

    Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson is facing intense criticism after his recent Saturday Night Live appearance…

    Watch Amanda break down the scandal below…

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    China Raids US Corporate Due Diligence Firm in Beijing – Retaliation or Crackdown?

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    3
    Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    ANALYSIS – The communist regime in China raided a private U.S. investigations company’s office in Beijing on March 20. 

    This brazen, and likely unlawful, act against the New York-based due diligence firm, the Mintz Group, follows the FBI raid last fall of an illegal Chinese overseas ‘police station’ in New York City.

    And some see it as a heavy-handed, and non-symmetrical retaliation.

    But the raid in Beijing is also likely tied to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s draconian security crackdown on the information inside China.

    “Red alerts should be going off in all boardrooms right now about risks in China,” said one source in the New York Post.

    The same U.S. business person also said that the Mintz Group raid sent a “remarkable signal” that Beijing will suck up foreign money and technology but won’t accept credible U.S. firms conducting research and investigations on Chinese partners or the country’s business environment.

    Reuters reported that the company confirmed that “Chinese authorities have detained the five staff in Mintz Group’s Beijing office, all of them Chinese nationals, and have closed our operations there.”

    The detained employees are reportedly being held somewhere outside Beijing. The company has not been able to contact the employees since they were detained.

    Unlike the official police status of the Chinese outposts raided in NYC, the Mintz Group is a purely private company.

    The firm describes itself as “a corporate investigations firm that gathers information before hiring, before transactions, during litigation disputes and after frauds, all over the world.”

    According to its website, the company has over 450 investigators in 18 offices worldwide, but its Beijing office is the only one in mainland China. It has a second office in Hong Kong.

    It also does background checks, asset tracing, and fraud and corruption investigations for businesses planning acquisitions or other large investments. 

    This corporate mission will likely be used by Chinese authorities to accuse the company of being spies.

    And it wouldn’t be the first time western due diligence companies have gotten into trouble with Chinese authorities. 

    British corporate investigator Peter Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng, who ran a risk advisory firm, ChinaWhys, were detained in 2013 for work they did for a giant British pharmaceutical firm.

    They spent two years in jail.

    But there is an added twist to this latest raid.

    While there may not be a direct link, the New York Post reported that: “Randal Phillips, a partner at the firm [Mintz Group] who heads its Asia operations but is based outside of China, is listed on its website as the Central Intelligence Agency’s former chief representative in China. Phillips worked in Beijing for years after leaving the CIA.”

    Even though the raid can be seen as a response to the FBI raid against Beijing’s illegal NYC police outpost, one of 100 stations around the world, the additional motive is also clear. 

    As the New York Times reports:

    …the move [also] highlighted the risks that firms involved in due diligence face in China as Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, has repeatedly called for a greater emphasis on security and has tightened the ruling Communist Party’s grip on information.

    The firm stated that it “has not received any official legal notice regarding a case against the company and has requested that the authorities release its employees.”

    Perhaps not coincidentally, reported the Wall Street Journal, the Mintz Group raid is putting foreign companies in China on alert just as the country hosts an international economic conclave called the ‘China Development Forum’ set for this weekend.

    The high-profile event is expected to be attended by Apple CEO Tim Cook, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Ray Dalio, who founded the world’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, and other top executives.

    According to a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, with increasing tensions between the U.S. and China, U.S. businesses already operating in China are increasingly pessimistic about their prospects.

    Maybe this latest Chinese act will make more U.S. firms think twice about investing there.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

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