🚨JUST IN: Gavin Newsom’s cozy relationship with China called out in our new book
ONE DAY BEFORE OUR BOOK LAUNCH,
@dcexaminer HAS AN EXCLUSIVE ON MORE OF NEWSOM'S DISTURBING TIES TO THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT.
Here are some excerpts from the Washington Examiner piece by
@Barnini Chakroborty
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has veered into shaky political territory by “consistently” engaging with the Chinese Communist Party and selling out his state and country multiple times, according to explosive claims in a new book.
In Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All, which will be released Tuesday, authors Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter take a microscope to the governor’s cozy relationship with Beijing.
One of the instances in the book involves Newsom’s 2022 veto of a bill that would have prohibited foreign governments from purchasing or leasing agricultural land in California.
Another incident Crabtree and McFatter point to is the hiring of Yu Ben Meng, a Chinese national with a key CCP banking role, as chief investor officer at California’s public pension system. The duo claims Yu was given a salary higher than any other state government employee, $1.5 million for two years, and was allowed to invest $3 billion in Chinese companies, including some that were blacklisted by the U.S. for their role in surveilling the Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in China.
Crabtree and McFatter also found that Yu was recruited by China’s Thousand Talents Program to serve as director of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, a regulatory agency that serves as the administrative arm of the People’s Bank of China, which carries out the policies of the CCP. Yu resigned from the California pension system after he approved a $1 billion investment in a private equity company controlled by the Blackstone Group. A yearslong investigation also found him to be in violation of two other conflict-of-interest claims and fined him $10,000.
“Newsom’s hiring of Yu Ben Meng is especially reprehensible,” Chang told the Washington Examiner. “Why would Newsom allow the funding of our enemy’s most dangerous practices?”
The book also faults Newsom for turning to TikTok for $300,000 in “behested payments” to promote his COVID-19 mandates on California citizens. Congress banned the Chinese-owned social media platform, but President Donald Trump postponed enforcement until April 5. Behested donations are contributions from an individual or organization solicited by a public official for a legislative, governmental, or charitable purpose.
*BEHESTED PAYMENTS are not only not illegal in California, they are a common though little-known part of the state's big pay-to-play schemes.
And Newsom has taken them to an extreme new level -- Gov. Newsom has asked corporations with business before the state to donate a total of more than $225 million to charitable causes of his own choosing. TikTok happily ponied up $300,000 to help promote the state's COVID lockdown/mask mandate public service announcements! (my emphasis added).
In just one year of the pandemic, Newsom asked companies to gift six times what his successor Gov. Jerry Brown asked in his final eight years in office.
Here's a good definition of behested payments from the LA Times:
Under California law, a donation is considered a behested payment when an elected official or someone acting on their behalf asks an organization to donate money or services to a nonprofit or government agency for a legislative, governmental or charitable purpose, such as supplying free air time to run public health ads or giving cash to the governor’s program promoting volunteerism. General requests for charitable donations not directed at any particular organization are not required to be reported as behested payments, according to the state’s campaign finance watchdog agency, the Fair Political Practices Commission.
“It calls into question whether companies are getting special access and special decisions because they are giving tens of millions of dollars,” said Jamie Court, president of the left-leaning advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.
TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT CALIFORNIA CORRUPTION AND NEWSOM'S DEEP TIES TO THE CHINESE GOVT AND ITS TRIAD MAFIA GANGS, READ OUR BOOK, FOOL'S GOLD: THE RADICALS, CON-ARTISTS, AND TRAITORS WHO KILLED THE CALIFORNIA DREAM AND NOW THREATEN US ALL.
I'll provide the link to the Washington Examiner story and the Amazon link to purchase in next post.