Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took more than $11,000 in campaign donations from the CEO of a Tampa refrigerant company backed by China, according to a report.According to a report in the Miami Herald, the donation was “just the latest in years” of financial support that the company, iGas USA, has given DeSantis. The report said that DeSantis even held a rally at the company’s Tampa complex.The report said:The rally and contributions are part of a recent wave of political giving by iGas and entities associated with its CEO, Xianbin (Ben) Meng. All told, the companies and employees...

A high-ranking Russian law official believed to be the authority behind attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who took part in the notorious Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr during the presidential campaign, has been killed in a mysterious helicopter crash. Deputy prosecutor-general Saak Karapetyan - a long-time ally of President Vladimir Putin - died last night when his AS-350 came down in Kostroma region northeast of Moscow during an unauthorized flight. Karapetyan had been in charge of Russian criminal investigations into the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK, and the deaths of Putin critic...

In March 2020, just weeks before California Gov. Gavin Newsom was “negotiating” a $1 billion mask deal with a Chinese company, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien announced that the Trump administration was “looking at” investments in blacklisted Chinese military companies by the state’s public employees retirement system, known as CalPERS. There were also questions about the relationship between CalPERS’ Chief Investment Officer, Chinese-born U.S. citizen Yu Meng, and the Chinese Communist Party. CalPERS executives vigorously defended Meng, even posting a long defense of their investments in China on their website, but Meng suddenly stepped down Wednesday, effective immediately. In a...

California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) said late Wednesday Yu Ben Meng resigned as its chief investment officer... The nation’s largest public pension fund, which manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.6 million California public employees, retirees and their families, said in a statement it will begin an immediate search for a permanent successor... A U.S. citizen born in China, Meng... in January 2019 became CIO managing $400 billion in investments... In March, U.S. national security adviser Robert O’Brien said U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is “looking at” investments in Chinese military companies by CalPERS.

According to one Western intelligence official, Western spy agencies have long been aware of Huawei’s intelligence-gathering function, and have exploited their knowledge to feed the Chinese with misleading information in a classic “Concordski” ploy. The name refers to the Soviet Union’s programme in the 1960s and 1970s to develop a rival to the Anglo-French supersonic Concorde airliner. The legend in intelligence circles is that the Soviet spies approached a British aeronautical engineer in an attempt to obtain detailed plans of Concorde. Alerted to the attempt, the British fed the Soviets with doctored plans. The Russian plane crashed on its international...

Meng Hongwei was not on French soil when he was last seen, according a senior French law enforcement official, who declined to say whether he was in China. Meng's wife went to police in Lyon, where Interpol is based, Thursday night to report his disappearance, according to a statement released by the French Interior Ministry on Friday. The spouse told police that she had last heard from him 10 days ago and had recently received threats via social networks and by telephone, according to the statement. "France is looking into the situation of the President of Interpol and is concerned...

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, Somebody out there apparently does not want President Trump to make a trade deal with China. Just after U.S. and Chinese officials agreed to suspend the implementation of new tariffs for 90 days, one of China’s most important tech executives was literally kidnapped as she was changing planes in Canada. Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was simply on her way to Mexico, but at the urging of U.S. authorities the Canadians grabbed her and are refusing to let her go. Reportedly, the plan is to extradite her to the United States where...

China appeared to intensify its punitive campaign against Canada over the arrest of a top Chinese technology executive as a second Canadian working here was detained by security officials and dropped out of contact with his government. The second case involves Michael Spavor, a writer and entrepreneur who operates a cultural organization that promotes trips into North Korea. A newspaper linked to the provincial government in Liaoning, along the border with North Korea, reported that he had been detained by security officials there on charges of “engaging in activities jeopardizing China’s national security.” Mr. Spavor gained prominence for helping arrange...

US prosecutors have charged Huawei's chief financial officer with fraud, saying she had used at least seven passports in 11 years. - ...she was charged with conspiracy to defraud multiple financial institutions between 2009 and 2014. It is alleged she used Hong Kong company Skycom to access the Iranian market in deals that violated US sanctions. She allegedly assured US banks that Huawei and Skycom were different companies but prosecutors say they were one and the same. - Mr Gibb-Carsley said she had been aware of the US investigation and had avoided entering the country since March 2017, despite the...

The missing Interpol chief, Meng Hongwei, who it was revealed on Sunday has been detained in China for 12 days unknown to his family or employer, has resigned from the international police agency. Interpol said it had received his resignation “with immediate effect” late on Sunday. It was the latest twist in the mystery of Meng’s disappearance last month after he flew from France to China. In a terse statement on Sunday evening, the Chinese authorities had admitted they were holding Meng under investigation by a new government anti-corruption unit for suspected “violations of the law”.

President Obama signed into law today a measure to replace references to minorities considered offensive -- such as "oriental" and "negro" from federal law. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Grace Meng, D-New York, is an effort to "modernize terms relating to minorities," replaces a slew of terms in a public health law written in the late 1970's with terms are considered more politically correct today.

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...