Don Pesci: Is Blumental holding off Biden endorsement on principle?
Sen. Richard Blumenthal
VERNON, Conn.
As of April 28, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat, has not yet endorsed his party’s likely presidential nominee, Joe Biden. Blumenthal’s continued non-endorsement cannot be the result of an oversight. Most prominent Democrats, even those engaged in the Democratic primary – including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders – have offered their endorsements. Former President Obama, after a little hectoring from bigwigs in his own party, has issued a late but fulsome endorsement.
No one seems to know for certain what may be holding up the Blumenthal endorsement, but theories are making the rounds.
May 11 will mark the one year anniversary of the publication of a piece that appeared in the New York Post titled “The troubling reason why Biden is so soft on China” written by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, the author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.” Some are nursing the theory that Blumenthal may have speed-read the piece and, a man of conscience, it disturbed his political equipoise.
How could any self-respecting Democrat endorse as president and the nominal head of the Democratic Party a politician who is “soft on China,” particularly now when China is importing stolen, proprietary data from companies in the United States that supply military equipment to the arsenal of democracy while exporting Coronavirus to the Western world?
Schweizer believes that the all but certain presidential nominee of the Democratic Party may be soft on China in part because China may have purchased his affections by providing money and golden opportunities to his son, Hunter Biden. The devil, we are told, is in the details. In the Schweizer piece the Devil’s details are hauled out of the shadows.
“In 2013,” Schweizer writes, “then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden flew aboard Air Force Two to China. Less than two weeks later, Hunter Biden’s firm inked a $1 billion private equity deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China. The deal was later expanded to $1.5 billion. In short, the Chinese government funded a business that it co-owned along with the son of a sitting vice president.”
The Post piece dots all its “i’s” and crosses all its “t’s” with a superfluity of details. It is, as we sometimes say in the business, convincing – absent an equally convincing response from Biden.
One of the Devil’s details cited by Schweizer stands out like a sore thumb. “Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit,” Schweizer writes. Twelve days after Hunter Biden “stepped off Air Force Two in Beijing, his company [Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC] signed a historic deal with the Bank of China, the state-owned financial behemoth often used as a tool of the Chinese government. The Bank of China had created a first-of-its-kind investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). According to BHR, one of its founding partners was none other than Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC.”
Rosemont, the Biden-Archer firm, became “increasingly involved with China. Devon Archer became the vice chairman of Bohai Harvest (BHR), helping [to] oversee some of the fund’s investments…. In December 2014, BHR became an ‘anchor investor’ in the IPO of China General Nuclear Power Corp. (CGN), a state-owned energy company involved in the construction of nuclear reactors. In April 2016, the U.S. Justice Department would charge CGN with stealing nuclear secrets from the United States — actions prosecutors said could cause ‘significant damage to our national security.’”
Asked what he knew and when he knew it concerning the China/Hunter Biden connections detailed by Schweizer, Joe Biden implausibly claimed he and his son never discussed Hunter Biden’s business relations. The Schweizer piece, some note, will have been in the public stream for a year in May and yet has not proven an obstacle to Biden’s march to the White House. None of the details were discussed during the sometimes contentious Democrat Primary, and the media has devoted little attention to it.
Why should we not suppose it is a dead letter – old news?That is always possible, but not likely in mano a mano debates between President Trump – who, whatever his failings, knows how to make news – and Biden who, most will acknowledge, is not William Jennings Bryant on the stump.
However, the question immediately before the house is: Why has Blumenthal not yet endorsed Biden? The answer to that question most flattering to Blumenthal may be: Perhaps Blumenthal is a man of strong ethical principles after all. Given the Schweizer analysis, which has not been disputed by Biden or Blumenthal, how it is possible to maintain a view that Trump is too cozy with China, roughly Blumenthal’s position, while extending a hearty endorsement of Biden, whose son Hunter has been woven into the Chinese tapestry in a fashion some might consider compromising?
Don Pesci is a Vernon-based columnist.