Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Democrats in the House of Representatives voted yesterday to entrust the impeachment of President Trump to a man whose conduct to date – to put it mildly – does not inspire confidence. 

To the contrary, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has shown himself to be a ruthless partisan, willing to do or say anything to end Donald Trump’s presidency. The latest example is Schiff’s dishonesty with regard to the nature of and his dealings with the former Joe Biden staffer whose so-called “whistleblowing” is being used to justify the impeachment inquiry.

Adam Schiff’s political warfare dressed up as impeachment proceedings is an appalling disservice to the nation. Among its growing costs will be: congressional inattention to the people’s business; executive branch distraction from growing foreign policy challenges; and devastating legal fees and other sacrifices borne by public servants caught up in the Democratic witch-hunt. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Millions of Californians are today the proverbial canaries in the mine shaft. In large swaths of the state, they are suffering not only the destructive effects of wildfires, but the often acute challenge of living for protracted periods without electricity.

Fortunately, today’s blackouts are not comprehensive. People with medical conditions that would be fatal if untreated by therapies that require refrigeration or power for other purposes can flee to areas where the lights are still on. But the impacts – economic, physical and societal – are nonetheless far-reaching, hugely disruptive and costly. 

Much of such hardship, devastation and dislocation arises from the fact that California’s largest electric utility has long neglected steps needed to enhance the resiliency of its “grid.” The truth is most Americans are similarly at risk and we must take steps now to secure the grid nationwide.

This is Frank Gaffney. Learn more at SecuretheGrid.com.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

There’s a lot of talk about influence operations designed to manipulate the outcome of American elections. While the allegations of a Russian-backed one affecting the 2016 presidential race proved to be wildly exaggerated, there are serious foreign-backed efforts underway to manipulate public opinion and votes here for decades to come.

Among other techniques, foreigners are infiltrating and manipulating the nation’s academic institutions. And they are doing so largely unnoticed and, more importantly, uncorrected.

For example, the Chinese Communist Party has Confucius Institutes on over 100 college campuses. An expatriate Turkish imam has nearly 200 Gulen schools across this country. And Qatar and its Muslim Brotherhood proxies are pushing Sharia-supremacist curricula in our school systems. 

America’s academy must not be dominated by our enemies. Or we will find, later if not very soon, that they are dominating our country, as well.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Hunter Biden is baaack. Evidently, he is a director of a Chinese government-backed fund that has partnered with a PRC company known for stealing U.S. military secrets. Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is now investigating this team’s 2015 purchase of an American manufacturer of militarily relevant equipment.

As it happens, yesterday, the board that oversees the retirement funds of our federal government employees and military personnel let stand a deeply problematic decision it made in 2017. Effectively, it would compel the Thrift Savings Plan’s beneficiaries to invest in the Biden firm’s partner, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, among other malevolent Chinese companies.

Fortunately, there is growing outrage at such a prospect. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer and six U.S. senators have called for the Thrift Savings Plan board to reverse course. Failing that, it must be required to do so.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

America achieved an important victory over the Islamic State yesterday with the elimination of ISIS’ founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Commander-in-Chief Trump deserves credit for ordering such a dangerous mission, second only to that earned by the heroic special operators who executed it flawlessly.

Two facts must temper our celebrations, however.  First, al- Baghdadi was reportedly enroute to Turkey to gain safe-haven for his family. That should remind us the Islamist Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is an enabler of ISIS, not a reliable partner in destroying it. 

Second, other Sharia supremacists, including some tied to ISIS, are now far advanced in setting up a vast new  caliphate in Nigeria – potentially a far richer and more dangerous one than al-Baghdadi’s. 

We must defeat such violent groups and their stealthy counterparts, at home as well as abroad, not just neutralize their leaders.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

There’s an unfolding, high-stakes scandal about which  most of us are oblivious. It involves several financial industry insiders quietly deciding to invest the retirement funds of American military personnel – both serving ones and veterans – and of other federal government employees in Communist Chinese companies. 

 

Some of these companies are building weapons and strategically located fortified islands that pose a potentially mortal threat to our people, allies and interests. It’s actually illegal to do business a number of them.

 

Fortunately, Richard Spencer – himself a former top Wall Street executive who is now our Navy Secretary – issued a powerful warning today about this scandal in the Wall Street Journal. He called for this decision to be reversed “before a single dollar from [the Thrift Savings Plan] pays for a weapons system aimed in our direction.”

 

If you agree, sign the petition at PresentDangerChina.org.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Earlier this week, China’s defense minister issued an explicit and mortal threat to Taiwan.  He declared that its enslavement through “unification” with the People’s Republic of China was a top priority for the Chinese Communist Party. And he asserted that no one would be allowed to impede the realization of that goal.

Those warnings were issued against the backdrop of  Beijing’s intensifying crackdown in Hong Kong and the infamous phone call to President Trump from Recep Tayyip Erdogan announcing the Turkish dictator’s imminent invasion of northern Syria. 

Right now – before Chinese dictator Xi Jinping is tempted to make a similar call announcing that Taiwan is the next to be attacked – President Trump should serve notice that America stands squarely with those in the front lines of the War for the Free World: the people of Hong Kong and their Taiwanese counterparts.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Sometime soon, overseers of the federal retirement Thrift Savings Plan are going to make a fateful decision.  Will they greenlight or reject their previous plan to include problematic Chinese companies in the investment portfolios of past and present U.S. government civilian and military personnel. 

As with the recent, widely publicized repudiation of free speech by the NBA, this Wall Street bid to pursue near-term profits without regard for long-term national interests is reprehensible. 

To make matters even worse, such transactions appear at odds with the TSP managers’ duty to be responsible stewards for their retirees’ money. Unbelievably, as American Securities Association president Chris Iacovella recently pointed out, China’s corporations aren’t required to comply with our transparency and accountability standards. One actually had $4.4 billion simply, fraudulently disappear.

Find this outrageous? Then, join us in saying “No” at PresentDangerChina.org.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Deflection is a favorite tool of the hard Left and its unlikely Sharia-supremacist partners. Those in this “Red-Green axis” routinely accuse their adversaries of participating in the very activities in which they themselves engage.

A particularly egregious example was the false charge that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. In fact, it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that colluded with Russian intelligence to generate a salacious “dossier” intended to ensure his defeat.

Now, she is accusing Democratic presidential candidates of being Russian assets.

If, to use a turn of phrase recently employed by Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, the “nesting doll fits,” it seems to fit her far better. After all, as Secretary of State, she shamelessly facilitated the transfer of our national uranium stocks and militarily relevant technology to Russia while her husband and their foundation profited massively. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

If this were the Cold War, the United States would be on high nuclear alert at the moment. After all, the Russians are completing a comprehensive modernization – and massive upgrade – of their strategic forces. They hold an immense advantage in tactical nuclear weapons. And their doctrine calls for using such arms preemptively. 

Worse yet, the Red Army just conducted a huge exercise of these capabilities in an apparent dress-rehearsal for a massive nuclear attack against the United States. And Vladimir Putin personally presided over it.

Far from prompting a heightened alert status or other, urgent steps to enhance our deterrent posture, our country seems to be studiously ignoring what’s afoot in Russia. The practical effect of our indifference and non-response is to encourage more of this sort of threatening behavior – and perhaps set the stage for a Pearl Harbor-style sneak attack.

This is Frank Gaffney.