Name: Tony Blinken

Position for Which Nominated: Secretary of State

Connections to China and/or Extreme Leftist Organizations:

A great deal of speculation has been focused on Blinken’s ability to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party. Especially in the wake of the disastrous Alaska meetings, many have questioned whether or not Blinken has what it takes to counter Chinese expansionism and aggression. Here is maybe a more accurate way to frame the issue. Given that Blinken appears to have been part of Chinese United Front efforts to influence American policy for some time now, why would anyone ever think he would want to oppose Xi Jinping and his cronies?

Tony Blinken is Joe Biden’s Secretary of State. Blinken came to the job from his position as Managing Director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement that Joe Biden established in 2018 at the University of Pennsylvania.

As Director of the Penn Biden Center, Blinken did not preside over some institute charged with educating Americans and helping them understand the world around us. He presided over an entity that was funded in large measure by the Chinese and which seems to have been dedicated primarily to pushing Chinese propaganda inside the United States.^[i]

Since its founding, the Penn Biden Center has received in excess of $70 million from Chinese donors. Until questioned about it, the Center reported none of those donations even though it was required to by law. In excess of $20 million is still categorized as having come from anonymous Chinese sources. One donation alone, received on May 29, 2018, was for $14.5 million.^[ii]

John Solomon on Twitter: “Funding for Penn Biden Center remains shrouded amid suspicions of anonymous Chinese funding | Just The News https://t.co/h4b8pwmqeg / Twitter”

Funding for Penn Biden Center remains shrouded amid suspicions of anonymous Chinese funding | Just The News https://t.co/h4b8pwmqeg

The Penn Biden Center steers completely clear of any topics, which might displease the Chinese and focuses most of its attention on subjects and themes that dovetail nicely with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda worldwide. The Center avoids completely topics like forced labor camps in China, live organ harvesting from Uyghur captives, the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong or China’s role in the ongoing worldwide pandemic.

In January of this year the Biden Center sponsored a China research symposium. Topics discussed included the future of U.S. – China relations and China’s role in the future of healthcare and biotechnology. The keynote speaker was the Chinese Consul-General in New York. The symposium culminated with a Chinese New Year celebration. As COVID-19 was spreading around the globe, the Biden Center wanted to make sure you had the opportunity to celebrate the rapid growth of Chinese bio labs.

The number one item on the Biden Center’s website is something called “Advancing the Cause of Globalism.” That tab opens to a large color photo of Joe Biden and CCP Chairman Xi Jinping walking along in China almost arm in arm. The entire tenor of the accompanying text is intended to encourage continued American Chinese entanglement and interaction and to oppose Trump era efforts to decouple and stress “economic nationalism.”

In June of this year Penn Global, the Biden’s Center’s parent organization, sponsored an event focused on what it called “Stopping the Hate.” Consistent with Chinese Communist Party initiatives worldwide, this event was based on the premise that any mention of the geographical Chinese origin of COVID-19 being Wuhan was racist and intended to be an attack not only on ethnic Chinese but on all Asian Americans. One of the panel discussions during the event was entitled “America’s Concentration Camps: Then and Now?”

Not surprisingly, the close financial ties of the Biden Center to China and its slavish towing of the CCP’s propaganda line has attracted a great deal of criticism. The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), an organization that monitors ethics in public life, has taken a series of formal actions in this regard. In one 12-page complaint filed with the Department of Justice the NLPC has demanded an investigation of the Penn Biden Center, to determine whether it is in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for engaging in political activities on behalf of Chinese interests. The NLPC has also demanded that Blinken identify the Chinese donors who remain anonymous and has requested that the Department of Education order the Biden Center to comply with this request. For its part, the Biden Center has simply failed to respond to either the NLPC or the press.^[iii]

Commenting on the complaint against the Biden Center NLPC chair Peter Flaherty said, “it is apparent that the Biden Center is beholden to China for its operations.”^[iv]

⏳Towhee 🌏☮️ on Twitter: “Biden Institute @ University of Delaware refuses to disclose its donors now that Biden is Pres.Biden’s Secretary of State, Blinken, received $20 million in anonymous Chinese funding of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.https://t.co/gAeFX9Vj1O / Twitter”

Biden Institute @ University of Delaware refuses to disclose its donors now that Biden is Pres.Biden’s Secretary of State, Blinken, received $20 million in anonymous Chinese funding of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.https://t.co/gAeFX9Vj1O

Blinken is also one of the co-founders of a consulting firm called West Exec advisors. The firm offers access to senior U.S. policy makers in order to influence U.S. policy. Since it does not technically describe itself as a lobbying firm, it is not required to disclose its clients. Blinken and his partners accepted millions in payments from clients for the express purpose of manipulating the American government, but WestExec has never told us who those clients were.^[v]

There is strong evidence some of those clients at least were Chinese. ^[vi]

Ben Tallmadge on Twitter: “Give me a fikking break.Blinken & Sullivan co-founded WestExec advisors that took money from China for years.Blinken was managing director at U Penn Biden Center; Sullivan at Paul Tsai China Center.They are the United Front OF China. https://t.co/cAJBzTe8mK pic.twitter.com/r3aNfDItGa / Twitter”

Give me a fikking break.Blinken & Sullivan co-founded WestExec advisors that took money from China for years.Blinken was managing director at U Penn Biden Center; Sullivan at Paul Tsai China Center.They are the United Front OF China. https://t.co/cAJBzTe8mK pic.twitter.com/r3aNfDItGa

As of late July 2020, WestExec’s website was touting its work assisting “U.S. research universities” in “expanding foreign research collaboration, accepting foreign donations, and welcoming foreign students in key STEM programs” all while remaining “a trusted partner for DoD-sponsored research grants.”As recently as early August, the firm was still promoting its work helping a leading American pharmaceutical company as well as a multi-billion dollar American technology company enter and expand in Chinese markets.^[vii]

Then mysteriously, sometime between July 26 and August 2, 2020, only days before Biden was nominated by the Democratic Party as its candidate for President, all references to work in China were scrubbed.

A spokeswoman for WestExec told the Washington Free Beacon that the company “previously offered a service targeted to U.S. research universities to help them avoid inadvertently becoming involved with the Chinese government” but no longer provides that service. She did not provide the paper with details about why the firm stopped offering the service. The company says it still assists businesses, including a major U.S. manufacturing firm, in navigating “China-related risks in an era of strategic competition.”^[viii]

Blinken also serves on the Advisory Board of National Security Action. This left-leaning advocacy group was launched by former Obama staffers Ben Rhodes and Jake Sullivan in February 2018 to counter president Trump’s foreign policy and national security agenda.^[ix]

Blinken’s fellow Advisory Board members include several figures with ties to the socialist and communist left, as well as Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Havana and Caracas.

Representative Howard Berman – Member of Congress (1983-2013).

In 1985 Howard Berman was a guest speaker at the Los Angeles Democratic Socialists of America annual Debs-Sinclair Award Dinner.^[x]

Rep. Berman sent Stephanie Williamson, and Eric Jacob Stein to Venezuela for 3 days in September 2009 “to meet with Venezuelan leaders on the current political and economic atmosphere in Venezuela to obtain recommendations for U.S. policies”.^[xi]

The trip was courtesy of grants from the Havana -friendly Center for Democracy in the Americas. ^[xii]

Joseph Cirincione is a former President of the Ploughshares Fund.

The Ploughshares Fund donates to a range of far-left Foreign Policy organizations including the once notoriously KGB connected Washington DC think-thank the Institute for Policy Studies, the pro-Tehran National Iranian American Council, the Arms Control Association and the Council for a Livable World.^[xiii]

The latter organization was founded by reported Soviet intelligence agent and Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard to work for US nuclear disarmament to the advantage of Moscow.

In December 2020 the Council for a Livable World wrote:

This time next month will be the last minutes of the Trump administration, and like all those who value diplomacy over conflict and competence over chaos, we at the Council could not be more excited. President-elect Joe Biden has been a champion for nuclear risk reduction his entire career. In fact, the Council endorsed him in his first Senate bid in 1972, becoming his first endorsement from a national organization. The Council also endorsed him for President over the summer — our first ever endorsement at the Presidential level.

So far, we at the Council are optimistic about the selection of many of Biden’s Cabinet picks whose focuses overlap with ours, including Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken, Climate Change Envoy appointee John Kerry, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations nominee Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Director of National Intelligence nominee Avril Haines, National Security Advisor appointee Jake Sullivan, Secretary of Defense nominee Lloyd Austin and Secretary of Energy nominee Jennifer Granholm…

Meanwhile, while our team continues to focus primarily on Congressional work, we have met with various members of the Biden transition team to provide our expert analysis and insight on the most critical national security issues we’ll face over the next four years.^[xiv]

The Biden Administration has also recruited several Council for a Livable World personnel:

Though we are sad to see them go, the Center is proud of the board members and staff that have joined the Biden administration. Most critically, Alexandra Bell has left her position as Senior Policy Director after being appointed as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.

Mallory Stewart and Spencer Boyer left the Center Board of Directors to fulfill their respective roles of Senior Director for Arms Control, Disarmament, and Nonproliferation on the National Security Council, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy. From the Center’s Szilard Advisory Board, Anthony Wier has left to become Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation; Colin Kahl to become Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and Ned Price to become Department of State Spokesperson.^[xv]

Joseph Cirincione joined the board of the Council for a Livable World early in 2021.^[xvi]

In September 2016 Ben Rhodes and Joseph Cirincione addressed the National Iranian American Council Leadership Conference in Washington DC.^[xvii]

Michele Flournoy – Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (2009-2012).

While at Defense Flournoy employed senior advisor, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks the daughter of prominent Marxist Barbara Ehrenreich. Rosa was named after German communist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.^[xviii]

Barbara Ehrenreich was active in the Students for a Democratic Society^[xix] and the Maoist influenced New American Movement.^[xx]

In May 1974 Ehrenreich went to China as part of a delegation sponsored by the defunct socialist newspaper The Guardian.

Barbara Ehrenreich arrived in Canton at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution, which she interpreted “as a large-scale exercise in democratic participation”. In one Chinese town, the Americans were welcomed by a senior military official, who said to them: “When you go back to the United States, it is your job to create the armed revolution!” ^[xxi]

Barbara Ehrenreich was also a long-time leader of Democratic Socialists of America.^[xxii]and a leading light in the Institute for Policy Studies.^[xxiii]

Michelle Flournoy also served in 1988 as a Senior research Analyst for the Arms Control Association ^[xxiv] a subsidiary of Joe Cirincione’s Ploughshares Fund.

Cecilia Munoz served as the Director of Obama’s Domestic Policy Council (2012-2017).

Munoz spent most of 2008 training at the Rockwood Leadership Institute in Oakland California.^[xxv]

Rockwood, a training school for “community activists” is strongly associated with Maoist leaning socialists from the former League of Revolutionary Struggle, LeftRoots and Liberation Road.^[xxvi]

Tom Perriello served as a Democratic Member of Congress (2009-2011).

Chang Chiu, who served as Deputy Policy Director for Perriello for Virginia, founded Chinese American Progressive Action with Bay Area activist Alex Tom,^[xxvii] a member of the neo-Maoist LeftRoots organization.^[xxviii]

Alex Tom is also immediate past president of the San Francisco based and pro-Beijing Chinese Progressive Association – long led by members of the League of Revolutionary Struggle.^[xxix] Alex Tom boasts of close ties to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco.^[xxx]

Ambassador Samantha Power served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2013-2017).

Samantha Power signed an April 2003 Statement on Cuba, initiated and circulated by prominent Democratic Socialists of America member Leo Casey, calling for the lifting of trade sanctions against Cuba. Most signatories were also Democratic Socialists of America comrades.^[xxxi]

Penny Pritzker served as Secretary of Commerce (2013-2017).

Penny Pritzker was listed as one of several “official supporters” of the Committee of 100 National Conference” April 2016, in Beverly Hills. ^[xxxii]

Committee of 100 is a major Chinese Communist Party influence operation working in Taiwan the PRC and the US.^[xxxiii] Prominent members include Stanford University history professor emeritus Gordon H. Chang,^[xxxiv] a former leader of the League of Revolutionary Struggle.^[xxxv] (not to be confused with anti CCP commentator Gordon Chang).

Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter served as the Director of Policy Planning for the State Department (2009-2011).

In the 1980s Slaughter was part of the team headed by Professor Abram Chayes that helped the pro-Soviet Sandinista government of Nicaragua bring suit against the United States in the International Court of Justice for violations of international law, in the case Nicaragua v. United States (1986).^[xxxvi]

Ben Wikler is the Washington Director of MoveOn.org. and 2009 Rockwood Leadership Institute alumni.^[xxxvii]

Blinken may be the Secretary of State. The real question is this: for whom is he working?