OPINION:
China has attained victim status, compliments of the cabal that makes such assignments: Democrats and the liberal news media.
The two have expressed much annoyance at President Trump for even suggesting in a primetime speech that the communist regime would hack into state election files for nefarious reasons, such as rigging the vote.
The last time these two activated their “innocence project” and rushed to defend China was in 2020. Conservatives had the nerve to suggest that the deadly COVID-19 pandemic was rooted in a sloppy biological laboratory in a city called Wuhan.
Democrats and their media lashed out with hit pieces on individuals who dared suggest that the Wuhan lab that conducted experiments to create viruses could possibly be responsible for the disease that started in that city.
Fact check: Subsequent inquiries show that Beijing lied to the world and that the FBI concluded that the lab was the likely source (NPR: “Why Much Of The Media Dismissed Theories That COVID Leaked From Lab”).
Now, liberals must debunk the Trump charge of Chinese election tampering.
Mr. Trump ordered the declassification of U.S. intelligence documents showing that China hated him. He told the nation on July 16 that the files showed “over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.”
The information, he said, includes personal, sensitive information such as names, addresses, phone numbers and political party affiliations. He called the data loss “an unprecedented election security nightmare.”
However, liberals were not impressed. It was just Mr. Trump redoing his fake complaints about a fixed 2020 presidential election won by Joseph R. Biden.
Checking Google News after the speech, few, if any, headlines mentioned or criticized China for grand theft.
The Associated Press reported that Mr. Trump “doubles down” on his previous complaint. NBC News said the president “sows doubt about election integrity.” The ultra-liberal Los Angeles Times wrote, “Trump’s voter fraud speech was bait.” The New York Times: “Trump Exaggerates Claims About Election Vulnerabilities.”
Let us look at China’s record of breaking U.S. laws. China:
• Operates a criminal computer hacking empire with boiler rooms across Asia. The goal is to steal American intellectual property and, as a bonus, put a competitor out of business. “Today, and literally every day, they’re actively attacking our economic security, engaging in wholesale theft of our innovation, and our personal and corporate data,” then-FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told a House committee in January 2024.
• Places cyber bombs inside American electricity and water infrastructure. Mr. Wray said the placement is for “when China decides the time has come to strike” and the “CCP’s dangerous actions — China’s multi-pronged assault on our national and economic security — make it the defining threat of our generation.”
• Directs a network of computer scams and hacks aimed at America’s elderly to steal their savings, amounting to billions of dollars each year.
• Is a major supplier of methamphetamine and fentanyl components to Mexican drug cartels, with the aim of disrupting our society and killing Americans.
• Is suspected of smuggling in, through Chinese nationals, agroterrorism agents such as fungi to destroy crops, and of setting up illegal mobile drug labs.
• Misled the world on COVID-19 by first refusing to disclose the virus outbreak and then claiming that the virus does not spread from person to person.
“How could any reasonable person suspect China of illegally vacuuming up election data to use in a nefarious way?” That is the message from Democrats and the mainstream media.
Mr. Trump declassified many documents, including a November 2020 conversation among various intelligence operatives about a National Security Agency plan to withhold from Mr. Trump data on China’s election interference.
The discussion began Nov. 4, a day after Mr. Trump lost reelection. The plan was to develop an official intelligence community assessment of China’s role in the election. There is also a Nov. 20, 2020, memo from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to another DNI unit about the Intelligence Community Assessment “China section drafting team.”
The telling paragraph: “I think I mentioned to you before that there is some pending [redacted] that makes it clear China has been caught conducting election influence. At least that’s how it was described to us. [Redacted]. But as you scroll up, note that NSA ’deliberately massaged’ our one pending PDB to avoid any direct links to the election.”
The PDB is the President’s Daily Brief, a top-secret document. Mr. Trump was president. The National Security Agency, the U.S. wiretapper, decided not to tell him (“deliberately massaged”) that China attempted to influence the presidential election.
This came at a time when Mr. Trump was alleging election fraud.
An intelligence analyst on China and North Korea strategic assessments started the discussion earlier that day.
“We have deliberately massaged our one pending PDB to avoid any direct links to the election,” the analyst said. “The massive report we have been waiting on has been chopped up into 13 reports that likely will not get out until late next week.”
China is a criminal organization. It hacks and steals, supplies deadly drugs to cartels and plants cyber bombs to sabotage us. All this is illegal.
Liberals want us to just “massage” that away.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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