Last week, I blogged that U.S. Senator Feinstein had a “driver” who turned out to be a Chinese spy who reported back to government officials about local politics.
While she endeavored to minimize the impact of this individual to her work, The Daily Caller did some digging and it turns out he was substantially more involved with her office than chauffeuring California’s Senior US Senator to events.
All the details of a former, longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer who’s accused of relaying information to Chinese intelligence services while working for the California Democrat point to Russell Lowe, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has determined.Lowe worked for 20 years in Feinstein’s San Francisco office, where he was a staff liaison to the Asian-American community before leaving approximately five years ago. All those details match up with the descriptions of the Chinese spy Feinstein reportedly employed.
The New York Post’s Paul Sperry took a look at the FBI’s accounts and concluded that Feinstein was an “easy mark” for Chinese espionage.
In June 1996 — after the staffer had begun working for Feinstein — the FBI detected that the Chinese government was attempting to seek favor with the senator, who at the time sat on the East Asian and Pacific affairs subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, which oversees US-China relations. Investigators warned her in a classified briefing that Beijing might try to influence her through illegal campaign contributions laundered through front corporations and other cutouts.The warning proved prescient.One Chinese bagman, Nanping-born John Huang, showed up at Feinstein’s San Francisco home for a fundraising dinner with a Beijing official tied to the People’s Bank of China and the Communist Party Committee. As a foreign national, the official wasn’t legally qualified to make the $50,000-a-plate donation to dine at the banquet.After a Justice Department task force investigated widespread illegal fundraising during the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign, Feinstein returned more than $12,000 in contributions from donors associated with Huang, who was later convicted of campaign-finance fraud along with other Beijing bagmen. The DNC and the Clinton campaign had to return millions in ill-gotten cash.
Finally, Ben Weingarten of The Federalist does an in-depth review of Feinstein’s Chinese connections and distills the key facts as part of a detailed, informative post.
- China has for almost 40 years cultivated warm relations with Feinstein.
- Feinstein has uniformly taken political positions supporting greater ties with China while taking a relatively dovish and strictly apologist line on its human rights atrocities.
- Feinstein’s husband has profited handsomely during Feinstein’s career from the greatly expanded China trade she supported. It is of course possible that the Feinstein family’s privileged position with the Chinese regime improved his investment opportunities.
- Feinstein has served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.
- A staffer of almost two decades in close proximity to Feinstein was allegedly successfully recruited by China’s MSS and fed China “political intelligence.
Feinstein has been trying to sweep this mess under the rug, but a Tweet from President Trump got her to respond to the now public information.
I initially thought the release of this news might be a move to draw California voters away from Feinstein, allowing her more progressive challenger to take her place in the Senate. Now, I am thinking that it is a righteous comeuppance that has its origins with the Trump, who is falsely being charged with “collusion” by Hillary Clinton supporters…of whom Feinstein has been one of the biggest.
The contrast between how these two cases have been handled by the FBI is stark.
I have changed my mind about voting for Feinstein this November. It is clear she has served herself and not the citizens of California for the duration of her career. I will write-in a candidate, and should her opponent win the seat, I will be consoled by the fact that Kevin de Leon will not be able to either wield or abuse power to the same degree as a long-term, senior senator.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY