Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

At a time when many of us are covering our faces, being “unmasked” might endanger our health. In official Washington, it can have the effect of destroying one’s professional and personal life.

We learned yesterday the names of over thirty Obama Administration officials who appear to have abused their power to unmask – employing intelligence tools to violate General Michael Flynn’s constitutional rights, expose his identity and end his career.

Evidently, this act of political warfare was not an isolated incident. Late in his presidency, Barack Obama vastly expanded the numbers of his subordinates allowed to unmask American citizens. The predictable effect was to enable many officials to do what was done to Mike Flynn, namely, take him out.

We appear now to have the first smoking-gun directly implicating President Obama in the “Obamagate” scandal. There are likely more to come.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

We’ve witnessed lately the release of a slew of formerly classified documents. Some .of them have shed clarifying light on a long-running campaign to thwart Donald Trump’s election and undermine his presidency.

Mr. Trump calls the scandal thus exposed “Obamagate” and asserts that it “makes Watergate look small time.”

The question that defined that earlier, notorious abuse of power must now be asked of Mr. Trump’s predecessor: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

The recent document dump suggests that Barack Obama was aware of – and, therefore, complicit in – a plot to defeat Donald Trump at the polls and, failing that, to ensure he would not long occupy the White House.

If that proves to be true, Obamagate must end as did Watergate – with the man ultimately responsible and his senior subordinates driven from public life in disgrace.

This is Frank Gaffney.

is is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

Donald Trump channeled his inner Ronald Reagan Monday.

When President Trump learned recently that American servicemen and women and other federal government employees’ retirement funds were about to be invested in Chinese Communist Party companies, he said, “This needs to stop.” And yesterday, his order was faithfully executed by no fewer than three senior subordinates – National Economic Council Chair Lawrence Kudlow, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia.

The message they collectively sent to the board that manages the Thrift Savings Plan could not have been more clear: Chinese companies are unacceptably risky. Some enable malevolent CCP activities that repress the Chinese people and threaten ours. And none conform to our nation’s requirements for transparency, accountability and disclosure.

The Gipper’s worthy successor, Donald Trump, has sent a powerful message to Beijing. And Wall Street is on notice, too.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

The U.S. House of Representatives has become of late a ghost house. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ruled out its reconvening on the grounds that the so-called COVID-19 pandemic has made doing so unsafe. This arrangement allows her effectively to dictate legislation, rather than allow the Congress as a whole to participate.

Another consequence has been to prevent opportunities for needed bipartisanship in response to the threats posed to our nation by the Chinese Communist Party. That effect was on display when House Republicans tried to forge a task force on China with their Democratic counterparts, only to be rebuffed.

Apparently, Speaker Pelosi and her caucus are determined to do nothing that would advance the country’s interests if it might reflect well on President Trump. Such virulent partisanship is always reprehensible. But it is unacceptable in time of war – like now.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

Yesterday’s release of sensitive documents in Washington provides proof at last of a mortal threat to our Republic – namely, the weaponization of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies as instruments of the Left’s domestic political warfare.

Any objective observer would find appalling the now-documented, deliberate entrapment and take-down of President Trump’s first National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn. Worse yet, the evidence suggests that President Obama, as well as many of his senior subordinates, were involved in – or at least informed about – a larger effort to use government powers to prevent Mr. Trump’s election and, failing that, to abort his presidency.

Scarcely less ominous are new revelations confirming that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has systematically engaged in abuses of power, too – rather than preventing those of others.

Now that we know, those responsible must be held accountable.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

Larry Fink runs Wall Street’s 800-ton gorilla, a company called BlackRock. It started 2020 with $7.4 trillion under management. And Fink makes no secret of using that financial clout to advance his hard left, post-America globalist agenda.

Specifically, Fink is forcing the many companies in which BlackRock invests to adopt his so-called ESG priorities. That basically means conforming to the radical environment, social justice and governance schemes espoused by the lunatic Green New Deal.

The one exception Fink makes is for investing in Communist China. He’s indifferent to the CCP’s abysmal record with respect to “E”, “S” and “G.” And Chinese companies are very risky bets at the moment, too.

Larry Fink’s firm manages federal retirees’ pension funds and wants them invested in China. Donald Trump wisely does not. Who will prevail? The anti-Trump globalist or the America First President?

Trump must.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

One of the most impressive men in the Trump administration is Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger. A former journalist in Beijing and combat Marine, he is today one of the President’s most knowledgeable and robust China experts. 

Mr. Pottinger’s skills were on display in a speech delivered in fluent Mandarin on Monday to a University of Virginia audience. But it was clearly intended for the people of China, too. He subtly appealed for them to draw on “traditional Chinese ideals about virtuous leadership” in repudiating the CCP’s totalitarian repression.

The Pottinger address will surely infuriate the thugs of the Communist Party. Like all bullies, they are good at dishing out incitement, but are hypersensitive about taking it. Here’s hoping President Trump will pile on with a Reaganesque “Evil Empire” speech of his own, perhaps like Matt Pottinger’s, with “Chinese characteristics.”

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

“Made in China” is clearly a damaged brand in the wake of the Chinese Communist Party pandemic that is perhaps its most notorious example. 

Americans have awakened to the horrifying reality that their lives are now profoundly impacted by what comes from China. And much of what China provides can be – and in some cases is being – weaponized, by withholding it, by adulterating it or by utilizing it for the CCP’s own purposes. 

For instance, thanks to decades of predatory trade practices, the Chinese produce our medicines, hygienic masks, gloves and gowns, clothes and shoes, gear for the electric grid, hardware, drones, phones, silicon chips and other electronic equipment and the rare earth minerals from which they are manufactured.

The made-in-China virus is our opportunity to begin ending an unsustainable practice of relying on other things produced there. Boycott China. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

Donald Trump will always be remembered as the president who led the country through the “wartime” period precipitated when the Chinese Communist Party unleashed the “invisible enemy” – the CCP virus – and resulting pandemic upon us and the rest of the world. 

The single most important accomplishment of the Trump presidency, however, may be his efforts to prevent an even worse catastrophe than what we’re currently experiencing. In an Executive Order issued in March 2019 and another one unveiled last week, Mr. Trump has explicitly recognized that the vulnerability of our electric grid to attack or natural disruptions constitutes a national emergency. Without electricity, there’s no America. 

For the potential importance of this legacy to be achieved, however, the President will have to ensure that the Deep State-riddled bureaucracy and hostile special interests, notably among the utility sector, do as directed. Starting NOW.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.      

Donald Trump has reportedly decided U.S. military and civilian federal government employees must not be compelled to invest their retirement funds in Chinese Communist Party companies. Sinclair Broadcasting’s James Rosen reports the President has said, “We can’t allow this to move forward. This needs to stop.”

That should be a no-brainer. For one thing, doing otherwise risks Thrift Savings Plan beneficiaries’ savings in non-transparent, unaccountable CCP corporations with undisclosed material risk. Some help the Communist regime oppress its own people, others help it threaten ours. And the TSP investing $50 billion in China now would reward the pandemic’s perpetrators.

Mr. Trump will doubtless come under excruciating pressure to reverse course – from Beijing, naturally, but also from the powerful China Lobby on Wall Street. The President needs to know we have his back. Please sign a petition telling him so at PresentDangerChina.org.

This is Frank Gaffney.