Biden's Cave to Xi on Huawei's Meng Is a Calamitous Sellout
Plus the Durham-Sussmann Indictment in one simple video
Biden's Cave to Xi on Huawei's Meng Is a Calamitous Sellout
President Joe Biden just engaged in a massive sellout to our greatest adversary, Communist China.
While the American media has been largely muted on the story, in Beijing, it is being trumpeted as a major propaganda coup and, more importantly, a sign of Biden administration weakness inviting still more aggression.
The sellout concerns Huawei—not only the quintessential representative of China's grand strategy to become the predominant global hegemon, but arguably its linchpin as the would-be peerless provider of the 5G telecommunications infrastructure over which much of the world's information is poised to travel.
Last week, the Department of Justice announced it had reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the chief financial officer of Huawei and daughter of its founder, Meng Wanzhou, ending the case against her.
In exchange for admitting to a series of lies she had previously denied regarding Huawei's alleged sanctions-busting work in Iran, for which she faced charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, Meng was let off scot-free.
Meng had been embroiled in a high-stakes extradition fight with the U.S. government after having been detained by Canadian authorities in Vancouver in December 2018, in connection with the case the DOJ had been pursuing.
Days later, two Canadian citizens, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, the latter a former diplomat, were detained in China on apparently trumped-up espionage charges.
Spavor was sentenced this August to 11 years in jail. Kovrig's "case" was still pending when he and Spavor were released, shortly after the DOJ came to its agreement with Meng. China's foreign ministry, in a seeming bid to save face, claimed the "two Michaels" were being released on bail for health reasons, after they had confessed to their guilt.
The message of China's "hostage diplomacy" was clear: "You take one of ours on the basis of the rule of law, and we'll take two of yours on the basis of rule by 'law.'"
The message of America's relenting in the Meng case was also clear: "When Xi says 'jump,' Biden asks 'how high?'"
How do we know this?
I explain in a new piece at Newsweek.
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Separately, for Straight Arrow News I delivered a monologue covering everything you need to know about the John Durham Special Counsel’s Sussmann indictment, the perjury perils potentially facing Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and the broader stakes of the investigation.
Check it out here.