Chinese Influence Operations

September 17 marks the day each year when the United States of America celebrates Constitution Day. During this week, a program on the US Constitution is required teaching in our public schools. Instead what many parents are discovering in over 500 of our K-12 schools is that their children are learning in “Confucius classrooms” financially supported by a partnership with “Hanban,” whose parent agency is the Chinese Ministry of Education in Beijing. The communist giant employs a multi-pronged approach to exporting its ideology to the US. The inroads China is making in the American educational system is beyond acceptable.

China provides our children the teachers, approved textbooks, and operating funds. For the last 16 years it has been expanding and funding these “soft power” influence operations with the end goal of broadly promoting a communist state agenda across America. When the FBI, US State Department, and some Members of Congress investigated recently, China simply adapted and renamed its Confucius Institute program the “Ministry of Education Center for Language Exchange and Cooperation” to enable it to skirt American law. Now the “Chinese International Education Foundation” funds and oversees the remaining Confucius Centers. In August, the US State Department announced it was designating the Confucius Institute US Center a foreign mission with the goal of forcing greater transparency in its recruiting operations, funding, and PRC personnel. It may have slowed, but it hasn’t stopped Beijing.

China is running what is commonly referred to as a “united front” operation in the US. The CCP is creating outposts to infiltrate college and university campuses. Over 67 of these college centers are active with five more scheduled to open by the end of September. They disseminate propaganda, conduct espionage in our top university research labs, monitor Chinese students studying in US schools and, according to CCP policy documents, serve to “make the foreign serve China.” Beijing also runs standalone organizations in American cities that show propaganda films, conduct “training,” and attempt to influence local and state politicians.

On Capitol Hill American lobbyists and public relations firms paid by communist China help push through legislation favorable to Beijing and the CCP. The Jamestown Foundation recently identified and named several of the lobbying and public relations firms hired by China. They include well-known, heavy hitters with close ties to Congress who are impactful at influence peddling. “Over the past decade, CUSEF [China-US Exchange Foundation] has been one of the most prominent Chinese entities funding lobbying efforts in the United States: from 2010 to the present, at least seven US firms have maintained contracts with CUSEF for lobbying and public relations services,” according to John Dotson of the Jamestown Foundation. CUSEF Chairman Tung Chee-Hwa is Vice-Chairman of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference, which is under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

BLJ Worldwide, a public relations firm in Washington, DC, performs “a broad range of public services in the U.S., including but not limited to defending and promoting China and the key strategic areas in the China-U.S. relationship in the media,” according to Dotson. In the first six months of this year CUSEF paid BLJ $313,000 and another client, the PRC Embassy, paid $144,000. Some of the funds went to the development of a social media campaign and the China-US Focus website. According to Jamestown Foundation, the establishment of such “synthetic think tank publications” backed by the Chinese Ministry of State Security follows a pattern used in other countries to promote PRC propaganda and to criticize policy China does not agree with.

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The DC lobbying firm, Fontheim International, has been working for China since 2009 earning up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single reporting quarter. Covington & Burling also provided China “services.” Capital Counsel promised China “policy and political intelligence gathering an analysis” along with “coalition building,” “arranging meeting and programs on Capitol Hill,” and help with “dissemination with Congress of material generated or sponsored by CUSEF [Chinese government].” Before it closed its doors, the Podesta Group, a well-known lobbying firm in Washington with close ties to the Obama Administration earned hundreds of thousands from the Chinese government. It shuttered its operations after their principals discovered they were under federal investigation. Unfortunately, they simply regrouped and were rehired under a new name. Others include Wilson Global Communications and BGR Government Affairs, which receives $400,000 annually for its efforts on behalf of China.

The American people need to wake up and realize that this nation is under attack from China on a number of fronts. The longer the tentacles of communism are allowed to attach themselves to our children and the republic the harder it will be to extract them.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Friday, she presents key updates on China.

Illustration: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Judge Merchan continues to deny justice to Donald Trump

In August of 2024, we discussed the US Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States. We described the three tiered system enunciated by Chief Justice Roberts to determine whether or not the actions taken by the President of the United States are entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution or not. The first tier are acts within the President’s constitutionally mandated authority which are subject to “absolute immunity.” The next are acts that may have “presumptive immunity,” and are subject to examination with evidence that rebuts the presumption of immunity. The third are acts which are unofficial, and which enjoy no immunity. In September, we also discussed the effect this decision should have on the New York County criminal case currently pending against President-elect Trump before Judge Juan Merchan. We cited to a CNN report, which described the evidence used against Donald Trump at the trial of that matter: “Trump’s lawyers pointed to testimony at trial – including from White House officials Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout – they argued should not have come before the jury…'[a]ll of Hicks’s testimony concerning events in 2018, when she was serving as the White House Communications Director, concerned official acts based on [Presidential] authority for which President Trump is entitled to absolute immunity,’ Trump’s attorneys argued. ‘[the Supreme Court’s ruling] specifically forbids prosecutors from offering ‘testimony’ from a President’s ‘advisers’ for the purpose of ‘probing the official act.’” Sure enough, as Chief Justice Roberts stated in the Presidential Immunity decision, “[a]llowing prosecutors to ask or suggest that the jury probe official acts for which the President is immune would thus raise a unique risk that the jurors’ deliberations will be prejudiced by their views of the President’s policies and performance while in office. The prosaic tools on which the Government would have courts rely are an inadequate safeguard against the peculiar constitutional concerns implicated in the prosecution of a former President.” At the time, we stated that “Judge Merchan allowed testimony regarding Donald Trump’s official acts as President, acts which enjoy absolute immunity and which cannot be used against him, or even be entered into evidence in a criminal trial, a situation which could have been avoided had Judge Merchan delayed the trial until he’d received the guidance of the US Supreme Court.” Nonetheless, we predicted that Judge Merchan “will find a way to justify his actions once again, and let stand the unlawful conviction of former President Donald Trump.” You know how much we hate to say we were right…but…we were right. “This Court…finds that the evidence related to the [President-elect’s] claims relate entirely to unofficial conduct and thus, receive no immunity protections,” Judge Merchan wrote in his December 16, 2024 decision. “Further, even if this Court were to deem all of the contested evidence…as official conduct falling within the outer perimeter of Defendant’s Presidential authority, it would still find that the People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch, a conclusion amply supported by non-motive-related evidence.” In so ruling, the Court denied Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss his New York County conviction. Let us examine these findings, in light of the evidence admitted at the President-elect’s trial, and then compare that evidence to the acts granted absolute immunity by the US Supreme Court. In his decision, Judge Merchan discusses the testimony of Hope Hicks, who served as the Communications Director for the Trump White House. “Defendant argues that in her roles at the White House, any communications between Ms. Hicks and Defendant must receive absolute immunity…as Defendant’s ability to speak freely to Ms. Hicks was a core function of the Executive. According to Defendant, because Ms. Hicks wielded executive power on his behalf, authority that exists pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, any communications [President Trump] had with [Hicks] are subject to absolute immunity,” the Court wrote. Judge Merchan also noted that “[t]he People argue that the communications Defendant had with Ms. Hicks…constitute unofficial acts not entitled to any level of immunity.” In his inevitable agreement with the arguments presented by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office, Judge Merchan wrote “Defendant’s argument that any communication he had with Ms. Hicks is subject to absolute immunity by virtue of the position she held in the White House is mistaken…the President himself may speak in his unofficial capacity as a candidate or party leader, and certainly he can do so in his private capacity as well. Any argument that private conduct transforms into official conduct by communicating about the same to an individual with a particular title is without merit.” Thus, it is Judge Merchan’s position that the conversations Donald Trump had with his Communications Director are not entitled to immunity, even though those discussions were held at the White House, while Donald Trump was serving as President of the United States, merely because those discussions were not related to official Executive Branch activities. Sounds possibly reasonable – until you examine the Presidential Immunity decision more closely. In September, we wrote that “the statement made by Chief Justice Roberts in his majority opinion in the Presidential Immunity case [is significant]; ‘Presidents cannot be indicted based on conduct for which they are immune from prosecution…[t]estimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial.’” This statement by Chief Justice Roberts points to a blanket immunity for ANY discussions had between the President and his advisors, regardless of the nature of those communications. Further, we noted that the Supreme Court issued the following warning: “[t]he government…contends that a jury could ‘consider’ evidence concerning the President’s official acts ‘for limited and specified purposes,’ and that such evidence would ‘be admissible.’” In rejecting that argument, Chief Justice Roberts states “[t]hat proposal threatens to eviscerate the immunity we have recognized. It would permit a prosecutor to do indirectly what he cannot do directly – invite the jury to examine acts for which a President is immune from prosecution […]