Republican Senators led by Marco Rubio (FL) have penned an angry letter to Biden AG Merrick Garland over the DOJ’s decision to end a program to thwart Chinese spies.
The letter asks why the 2018 Trump administration ‘China Initiative’ – which was designed to identify and prosecute people hacking, stealing trade secrets, and conducting economic espionage for China within the US, according to Just the News.
“On Feb. 23, 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it was effectively ending the China Initiative and implementing a new ‘Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats,’ which will subsume the China Initiative’s work in addition to efforts related to countries such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” reads the Thursday letter.
In a speech announcing the termination of the China Initiative, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said that while China “stands apart” as a “brazen” espionage threat, a “broader approach” is needed to confront threats from a “variety” of countries. Olsen called this effort a “strategy for countering nation-state threats.”
Republican senators expressed concern that the new approach is ill-defined and therefore may not be effective at specifically combating nefarious activities conducted by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). -JtN
“In light of the continuing national security threat posed by the CCP, and the lack of clarity surrounding DOJ’s new ‘Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats,’ we write seeking clarity with respect to the changes in DOJ’s approach,” reads the letter. “Specifically, its enforcement efforts to counter espionage and other illicit activities conducted by the CCP.”
Five questions were included in the letter.
“Despite this critical moment and the high stakes, DOJ chose to disband its China Initiative in favor of a vague ‘Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats’ that appears to equate the unique and extensive threats from the CCP with those of other nation-state threats,” wrote the Senators. “What concrete policies and actions will emerge from this strategy, and their adequacy to the challenge at hand, remain to be seen. We urge DOJ to formally recognize and reprioritize the threat presented by the CCP to U.S. national security, and ask that you reconsider your decision to disband the China Initiative.”
And of course, while some might question pro-China changes at the DOJ if it were Don Jr. who’d inked all sorts of international deals with Chinese power players during the Obama administration – we assume nobody in the MSM would dare suggest this has anything to do with the Bidens’ cozy relationships with Chinese businessmen.
Chinese espionage costs the U.S. between $200 billion-$600 billion dollars a year in stolen intellectual property, according to Mike Orlando, acting director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center.
In a Jan. 31 speech, FBI Director Christopher Wray described the threats posed by China inside the U.S. as uniquely troubling.
“When we tally up what we see in our investigations — over 2,000 of which are focused on the Chinese government trying to steal our information or technology — there is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation and our economic security than China,” he said. -JtN
Trump’s China Initiative was successful – leading to several arrests and convictions, most famous of which was Harvard Chemistry Department chair Charles Lieber, who was found guilty of lying to US officials about his ties to Beijing.
Read the rest of the report here.
