But that hasn't stopped Republicans from taking their own initiatives to root out Chinese interference and espionage without our country, even as Biden and Democrats continue to compromise our national security with their claim that "Russia, Russia, Russia" is our biggest adversary.
According to the Wall Street Journal, China attempted over at least a 10-year period to infiltrate the U.S. Federal Reserve and place "a network of informants inside" the institution in an effort to steal data and undermine U.S. financial and economic policy.
Federal Reserve employees were offered fat contracts with Chinese talent recruitment programs that oftentimes included cash payments in exchange for providing Beijing with information on U.S. economy and interest rate changes, according to a report from Republican staffers with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
In addition, the WSJ reported, the ChiComs even threatened to jail a Fed economist who had traveled to Shanghai as part of their espionage and influence campaign. The paper said that the economist was detained in 2019, adding that it is not clear if any "sensitive information was compromised," though it's also not clear what kind of "sensitive" data the Fed would have in the first place.
The GOP investigators called the operation "a sustained effort by China, over more than a decade, to gain influence over the Federal Reserve and a failure by the Federal Reserve to combat this threat effectively."
But Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell blasted the report: "Because we understand that some actors aim to exploit any vulnerabilities, our processes, controls and technology are robust and updated regularly. We respectfully reject any suggestions to the contrary."
He added: "We take seriously any violations of these robust information security policies."
A previous investigation by the Fed identified 13 people of interest beginning around 2015, and the GOP Senate probe relied "heavily" on those findings for the new report. One economist within the Fed was fired for violating the agency's rules and was found to be close to a former Fed staffer who was believed to have tried to recruit people for the Chinese espionage network, the WSJ reported.
That former staffer "expressed a desire to maintain an inside information sharing relationship" and had ties to Chinese government-backed talent recruitment programs.
Another staffer, according to the Senate report, "attempted to transfer large volumes of data from the Fed to an external site on at least two occasions," the WSJ reported.
In a letter to retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, the top Republican on the committee, Powell wrote that he would be concerned about "any supportable allegation of wrongdoing, whatever the source," before adding: "In contrast, we are deeply troubled by what we believe to be the report’s unfair, unsubstantiated, and unverified insinuations about particular staff members."
In response, Portman said that he hoped the probe "wakes the Fed up to the broad threat from China to our monetary policy," adding: "The risk is clear."
Chinese officials in 2019 detained a Fed economist and tried to coerce him to share data and information on U.S. government policies: WSJ
He was then promptly released when Beijing discovered nobody at the Fed has any clue what's going on?
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 26, 2022
China is America's biggest rival and long-term national security threat. If we had a functional government, then the current occupant of the White House would have already been impeached for being compromised by Beijing (and his son).
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