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John Podesta, former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and newly appointed senior advisor to President Biden, has maintained ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for more than a decade.
Podesta has cooperated closely with Tung Chee-hwa, a Hong Kong business tycoon and its first head of government after annexation to mainland China in 1997, according to a Daily Caller investigation.
Since at least 2009, Podesta has cooperated with the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), an NGO run by Tung with ties to the CCP.
Podesta serves on CUSEF’s steering committee and has written at least three papers since 2011 on its website. Other members of the CUSEF steering committee include Bill Gates himself; former U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez; and Henry Kissinger.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in a letter sent to the University of Texas at Austin, warned about CUSEF’s ties to the CCP, calling it a “pseudo-philanthropic foundation” and denouncing Tung for being vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCCC), an organization charged with laundering the CCP’s image with internationally influential organizations.
Aside from Tung, eight other key members of its founding have served on the CPPCCC.
Although his status as a citizen and member of the Hong Kong government served for a time to wash Tung’s international image, his affiliation with the CCP has been known to U.S. intelligence agencies since 1999.
Podesta, who was appointed senior advisor on green energy last Friday, will manage a $370,000 budget earmarked for green energy investments enacted by the Inflation Reduction Act.
How did Podesta weave his ties to the Chinese Communist Party?
After serving as former President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, Podesta founded the Center for American Progress in 2003. According to an article in The New York Times, during Barack Obama’s administration, Podesta’s think-tank was “a virtual external policy arm of the Obama administration.” Podesta would become an advisor to Obama in January 2014.
During his tenure as a pro-Obama intellectual and advisor, Podesta developed a professional relationship with Tung. In December 2013, Tung and Podesta published an article called “Toward a New Model of Major Power Relations,” the paper was published under the authorship of Wang Jisi, a member of the CCP and CUSEF board of directors.
The report included recommendations on climate policy and suggested China and the United States establish an international consensus to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Several emails leaked by Wikileaks in 2016 make clear Podesta’s personal relationship with Tung. The over 50 leaked emails between Podesta and the CUSEF founder sent between February 2015 and March 2016 reveal a working relationship to the point that Podesta’s staff implied that Tung call Podesta from his home phone line.
Between 2015 and 2017, CUSEF paid Podesta more than $890,000 for lobbying on its behalf. Although John Podesta retired from formally lobbying in 1993, his brother Tony Podesta has continued the family business that profits from Chinese money.
Economist, writer and liberal. With a focus on finance, the war on drugs, history, and geopolitics // Economista, escritor y liberal. Con enfoque en finanzas, guerra contra las drogas, historia y geopolítica