The #1 New York Times bestselling book Secret Empires by Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer is causing major ethics headaches for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

Multiple establishment media outlets have now confirmed the accuracy of Schweizer’s reporting about McConnell and Chao’s deep financial ties to China.

Here, then, are seven Secret Empires McConnell-Chao facts mainstream media outlets have verified.

1. CONFIRMED: Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao’s sister, Angela Chao, currently sits on the board of directors of the Communist Chinese government’s Bank of China

The Wall Street Journal verified the Secret Empires revelation that Elaine Chao’s sister–who is Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law–currently sits on the board of directors of the state-owned Bank of China. “Mr. Schweizer also points to the appointment of Ms. Chao’s sister, Angela Chao, to the board of state-owned Bank of China, 10 days after the 2016 election,” reported the Journal. 

The Bank of China’s own website lists Angela Chao as a board member.

2. CONFIRMED: Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao received $5 million to $25 million from her father, James Chao, whose shipping company Foremost Group does massive deals with the Chinese government.

The New York Post, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, The Hill, and others have all confirmed that James Chao, Elaine Chao’s father and Mitch McConnell’s father-in-law, gave the Washington power couple a “gift” (that’s the way it was recorded on McConnell’s financial disclosure forms) of between $5 to $25 million in 2008. According to the Post, the “gift” had a major impact on the couple’s net worth: “In 2004, current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, current U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, had an average net worth of $3.1 million. Ten years later, that number had increased to somewhere between $9.2 million and $36.5 million.”

Beginning in 2007, “just as the U.S. Senate was taking up sensitive legislation concerning China,” Schweizer reports that the Chinese government’s CSSC Holdings, Ltd.—the financial arm of the Chinese government’s military contractor CSSC—named James Chao to its board. CSSC Holdings also added Elaine Chao’s sister Angela Chao to its board as well.

“The fact that both the father-in-law and sister-in-law of Senator McConnell sat on the board of CSSC Holdings is highly unusual, to say the least,” writes Schweizer. “One could say it is unprecedented in American political history. In general, CSSC is a sensitive, critical asset of the Chinese government and operates under a veil of privacy and secrecy.”

3. CONFIRMED: Since Elaine Chao became Transportation Secretary, her family’s company Foremost Group has ordered 10 massive cargo ships from the Communist Chinese government’s China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC).

As Peter Schweizer and Jacob McLeod reported, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) in-laws have ordered 10 massive cargo ships from the Chinese government since the senator’s wife Elaine Chao became Secretary of Transportation. Indeed, Politico confirmed that Foremost Group “now appears to be engaging in a brisk period of expansion. Before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, it had 23 registered ships but since then has added 10 — more than a 40 percent increase in capacity — according to IHS Global ship registry information.”

4. CONFIRMED: Since becoming U.S. Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao and her father, James Chao, have appeared in at least a dozen Chinese media interviews, including foreign interviews that featured the Department of Transportation symbol and her father’s book.

As Politico revealed on Monday:

In at least a dozen interviews with Chinese and Chinese-American media outlets since her nomination, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has appeared beside her shipping magnate father, whose company carries goods between the United States and Asia, and who has given Chao and her husband at least $5 million in the past 10 years.

In many of the videos, James Chao is introduced as founder and chairman of the Foremost Group shipping company, and, in discussing a 2016 biography about his life, speaks proudly of his daughter’s role as secretary of transportation, as she sits beaming by his side.

One interview with New China Press published on April 12, 2017, features the pair sitting in what appears to be the Department of Transportation, with DOT flags in view behind the interviewer. Long portions of the interview are in Chinese, with James Chao talking about his life story, with a copy of his biography on the screen, and Elaine Chao extolling her father’s success story as “lifting the status of Asian-Americans in America.”

The Hill also noted that “In at least one other interview appearance, the Transportation Department flag and the state flag of Kentucky, the state Chao’s husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) represents, both appear in the background.”

5. CONFIRMED: James Chao and his daughter Angela Chao sat on the board of one of the Communist Chinese government’s largest military contractors.

Secret Empires provides painstaking detail of Foremost Group’s involvement with the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and its subsidiary CSSC Holdings. As the New York Post confirms, “The main goal of the CSSC is to strengthen the Chinese military. James and Angela Chao have both sat on the board of a CSSC offshoot.”

6. CONFIRMED: Videos uncovered by Politico reveal James Chao on camera with Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao signaling “guanxi”—the Chinese concept of personal power due to relationships.

According to Politico: “One interview with New China Press published on April 12, 2017, features the pair sitting in what appears to be the Department of Transportation, with DOT flags in view behind the interviewer. Long portions of the interview are in Chinese, with James Chao talking about his life story, with a copy of his biography on the screen, and Elaine Chao extolling her father’s success story as “lifting the status of Asian-Americans in America.”

Experts say Chinese business is all about projecting hierarchical power relationships (“guanxi”) to telegraph and leverage connections and status. Diane Wei Liang, bestselling author and expert on Chinese culture, business, and politics, told Politico: “Doing business in China requires a lot of connections. Political connections are normally considered as real advantages for business people. Any business that can demonstrate these kinds of connections sends a very positive message as to how successful the business is and how effective it would be to work with them.”

In the Chaos’ interview with New China Press, shipping magnate James Chao says he traveled aboard Air Force One, talked “business” with President Trump, and is “very, very lucky” to have a special pin (which he wore on his jacket) signifying that he is a guest of the president.

As New York magazine reported on Monday, “in many of the videos James Chao brags about his daughter’s government work and contacts. In one video he describes talking with Trump on Air Force One. ‘The president spent several minutes with me,’ he said. ‘We were talking about business.’”

7. CONFIRMED: Mitch McConnell and James Chao traveled to China as guests of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and met with former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, a former classmate of Chao’s.

As the New York Post confirmed in its report about Secret Empires, “When Senator McConnell — who took hardline positions against China prior to his marriage — met with high-ranking Chinese officials in 1994, it was not in his capacity as senator, but via a personal invitation from the CSSC arranged by James Chao. McConnell met with Zemin, then the country’s president, and vice-premiere Li Lanqing.”

Secret Empires is Peter Schweizer’s fifth consecutive New York Times bestselling investigative book.

Food stamp enrollment dropped by more than 1.3 million in just two months, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The USDA data reveals that the number of participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) plunged from 41,374,348 in December 2017 to 40,032,131 in February 2018—a decrease of 1,342,217.

Food stamp enrollment has dropped by more than half-a-million for the second month in a row in fiscal year (FY) 2018; last month’s data showed that 608,039 discontinued their participation in SNAP.

Using the latest data from the USDA, here is the breakdown of how many people discontinued their SNAP benefits each month of fiscal year (FY) 2018:

October to November- 4,015,110
November to December- 358,242
December to January- 734,178
January to February- 608,039

The continued decline in enrollment during these past few months is on pace with the steady decline in SNAP participation since 2013.

Before then, participation in the federal welfare program swelled to 47.6 million—the highest amount it has ever been since former President Lyndon Johnson authorized the creation of the food stamp program in 1964. Taxpayers spent $79.8 million on SNAP when enrollment reached its peak in 2013.

After 2013, enrollment in SNAP declined as states passed laws requiring food stamp recipients to work, volunteer, attend school, or take part in job training for a set number of hours a week to receive food stamps. The improving economy also contributed to the continuing decline in food stamp usage.

This decline seems to be continuing under the Trump administration, with more than two million benefit recipients discontinuing participation in SNAP during President Trump’s first year in office.

The USDA data shows that since February 2017—Trump’s first full month in office—food stamp enrollment dropped by 2,257,235.

Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer, bestselling author of Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, joined SiriusXM host Rebecca Mansour on Monday’s edition of Breitbart News Tonight to discuss the latest development in the scandal involving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s deep financial ties to the U.S. strategic rival China.

LISTEN:

On Monday, Politico reported that Elaine Chao appeared in joint interviews with her shipping mogul father in numerous “Chinese and Chinese-American media outlets since her nomination,” including at least one that appears to have been conducted at the Department of Energy (DOT) and prominently features the DOT flag in the background. Ethics experts raised concerns that Chao may have violated federal law prohibiting government officials from using their office for their own gain or that of their friends and family.

As Mansour reported on Breitbart News:

Schweizer revealed how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, Transportation Secretary Chao, received a “gift” from Chao’s shipping mogul father—whose company Foremost Group does massive deals with the Chinese government—for between $5 to $25 million. Elaine Chao’s sister, Angela Chao, also works for the Foremost Group and sits on the board of the Communist Chinese government’s Bank of China.

Schweizer’s book further revealed that Angela Chao was appointed to the Chinese state bank 10 days after President Trump was elected. Since Elaine Chao’s appointment as Trump’s Transportation secretary, China’s government-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) made a deal with the Chao family’s Foremost Group to purchase 10 ships, which effectively increased the Chao family’s fleet by nearly 50 percent.

In her interview with Schweizer, Mansour pointed out that military and intelligence officials have identified “long-term strategic competition” with China as the primary focus of U.S. national security, and China is doing its best to live up to that classification with provocative actions everywhere from Africa to the Straits of Taiwan.

“Don’t you think this is a little bit unnerving, that we’ve got the Senate Majority Leader and our Transportation Secretary this closely aligned to a strategic adversary that wants to overtake us militarily and is attacking our pilots?” she asked, referring to the two American pilots injured by Chinese military lasers in Djibouti.

“I think unnerving is a great word for it,” Schweizer agreed. “The problem is that these ties the Chao family, that Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao have to the Chinese government, it’s not through some obscure company. It’s through, as I mentioned before, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation. They are one of the largest military contractors in Beijing, so when you talk about the rising Chinese challenge to America strategically, a lot of that is based on the navy.”

“The U.S. Navy has projected that if current trends continue, by 2030 the Chinese navy will surpass the U.S. Navy in naval capability,” he observed. “So you have this bizarre situation where the Senate Majority Leader and his wife Elaine Chao directly financially benefit from the financial largesse of a key component of that Chinese navy military buildup. There’s no way around it.”

“This is really unprecedented,” Schweizer said. “I’ve never seen something like this in American political history. There’s no way around this. You can’t say that the Chinese aren’t a rival. You’ve got the Trump administration saying that. You have the Obama administration saying that before, that the rising military strategic challenge is real.”

“The Chinese have a strategy called ‘One Belt, One Road’ which is the sort of global infrastructure plan that they have,” he continued. “This is part of the reason that they’re in Djibouti, among other places in Africa and Asia. Their goal here is to create the infrastructure through Asia and through Africa that will allow Chinese goods to travel. Both the Obama administration and the Trump administration have spoken in detail about how One Belt, One Road is a direct strategic challenge to the United States.”

Schweizer quoted Elaine Chao’s sister Angela expressing strong approval of the One Belt, One Road project. Specifically, she called it “very important not only to China’s development, but for the many surrounding and neighboring countries, and thus the world.”

“She actually wants to help it succeed, because she thinks it’s good for China, but it’s also good for Africa. Out of that equation, of course, is the United States, because this represents a massive strategic challenge to the United States,” he said.

“You cannot have these conflicts of interest. If you have political leaders who are financially tied to our political rivals, they are unfortunately going to pick their financial interests every time. That’s why this is a big issue and a big problem that needs to be looked into and needs to be dealt with,” he urged.

“To me, it is one of the most disturbing stories I have heard in a long time – and I was horrified by what you uncovered in Clinton Cash, by the way. I’m still horrified by it,” said Mansour. “This is just as horrifying. The thing that really troubles me the most is, nobody’s touching it. This is the first time I’ve seen anybody, with this article in Politico and this article that was in New York Magazine, it’s the first time I’ve seen anybody pick it up.”

“I’m thinking, what is wrong with this country that we’re okay with this?” she continued. “We’re not paying attention. That’s how horrifying this is to me because it is unprecedented to see this sort of thing happening.”

Mansour noted that the McConnell-Chao-China story certainly seems to have captured the attention of “this crazy lunatic West Virginia Senate candidate,” Don Blankenship.

“I’ve never seen a more stupid and crazy campaign ad than I’ve seen with this dude,” she said of the infamous ad in which Blankenship referred to McConnell’s “China family.”

Nevertheless, she added that Blankenship appears to have surged ahead in the West Virginia Senate primary because he has the conflict-of-interest issue to himself, and “the grassroots despises Mitch McConnell so much that any candidate will rise in the polls if they just attack Mitch.”

“This story about Mitch McConnell and his family really, honestly, has nothing to do with the ethnicity of the Chao family,” Schweizer pointed out. “The reason I say that is, we have a chapter in Secret Empires that talks about the lucrative commercial ties to the Chinese government involving the Biden family. The last time I checked, the Bidens were Irish.”

“The point here is not the ethnicity of the Chao family, the fact that they are ethnically Chinese. The point here is, the Chinese have a very direct strategy of seeking out commercial ties with the family members of the American political elites – whether that’s Joe Biden, whether that’s Elaine Chao, they are trying, attempting to do this to the Trump family.”

“The point here is, we in this country have to be smart about this,” he advised. “We have to be smart in recognizing the Chinese believe that they can basically buy off our political leadership by doing these sweetheart deals with family members. We’ve got to monitor it. We’ve got to call it out. We’ve got to draw attention to it, and we’ve got to have a zero-tolerance policy. Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden are trying to avoid this issue by essentially ignoring it.”

“The Chinese have chosen to do this in a bipartisan way – in other words, they’re looking for deals with Republican families, with Democrat families, they don’t care,” Schweizer noted. “In our polarized country, it makes it very difficult to get people to come together and say in principle, whether Republican or Democrat, this is wrong. You’ve got Republicans who do not want to call out McConnell and Chao on this issue, and you’ve got Democrats who don’t want to call out Biden. The other side does not want to draw attention to it because it’s going to draw attention to their guy.”

“I think we as the American people have to say this is not a question of Republican or Democrat. This is about the sovereignty of our country. We’ve got to have leaders that are not compromised by their commercial ties to a foreign government, which is precisely what’s going on, whether you’re talking about Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao, or whether you’re talking about Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden,” he said.

“It didn’t take much for Politico to find this,” Mansour observed. “Elaine Chao, by the way, doesn’t even give interviews. She never does any press conferences. It literally was a Google search. Most interviews that she gave over the last two years were with her father, these joint interviews with him. It’s not like you have to dig very deep. These are major companies that they’re pairing with. It’s the communist government in China!”

“If you look at it based on these interviews the appearance seems to be that she has done more media in China, where the media is government-owned, than she has done media in the United States,” Schweizer concurred. “That’s a pretty shocking thing when you think about it. I give Politico great credit for this, for uncovering these videos, for reporting on it. I encourage people to go look at it. It’s a very good job of reporting.”

“It is shocking to me that you see this much work in the Chinese media and very little in the United States, certainly not wanting to answer any questions as it relates to the commercial ties that her family enjoys with the Chinese government. That has got to change. Our elected officials need to be accountable to us, and they need to be accountable to the media in a very legitimate way,” he said.

Mansour quoted a statement from the Department of Transportation dismissing Chao’s interviews in China as merely “a Cabinet member appearing with her father and other family members” to “share an inspirational story about immigrants from a minority community who have become successful in our country.”

“It wasn’t as if she was appearing in a Hallmark ad with her father,” Mansour objected.

With due caution against making unwarranted comparisons to the horrors of Nazi Germany, Mansour noted that China’s current strategic, militaristic, and ideological position is often compared to that of Germany in the 1930s, when the Nazi regime was building up its military, but the United States and Great Britain did not fully comprehend the mortal threat it posed. Drawing on that comparison, Mansour wondered how a Senate majority leader and a Cabinet secretary with financial ties to the German military machine would have been received at the time, or judged subsequently by history.

“That’s a very good way to look at this,” Schweizer responded. “Because look, does anybody dispute that the Chinese government is a rival power? The Obama administration said so. The Trump administration has certainly said so. Curiously, Elaine Chao doesn’t seem to have an opinion on this issue. She’s never made any statements as it regards to this issue.”

“The bottom line is this: the Foremost Group, which is the family business, has been very lucrative,” he said. “We know that James Chao, the father-in-law to Mitch McConnell, gave Mitch and Elaine Chao, his daughter, a gift of between $5 million and $25 million — they only have to report ranges, they don’t have to report exact amounts. So they have benefited from this.”

“James Chao has lived a long life. He’s older in age. He will pass along here at some point, maybe in the next five to ten years. I think it is a very safe assumption that Elaine Chao and Mitch McConnell will inherit a sizable amount of money from him, courtesy of the Foremost Group and this business he’s built,” he added.

“The bottom line is, the Foremost Group is entirely dependent on the good graces of the Chinese government,” Schweizer said.

“If the Chinese government decided tomorrow that they didn’t like something Mitch McConnell said or something that Elaine Chao did, they could shut down the family business tomorrow, because they build all the ships, they finance the construction of the ships, they provide crews for the ships, and they provide contracts for them to ship goods around that are goods from other Chinese-owned state enterprises. The shipping industry is extremely competitive. Without the benefit of the Chinese government, they would be in deep trouble,” he elaborated.

“Is that really a situation that we want our national leadership in?” Schweizer asked. “Would we want our national leadership in the 1930s dependent upon a rival power in that way? I don’t think so, and I don’t think we want that today.”

“To me, the most frustrating part about this is what you talked about earlier: it’s the fact that Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao do not want to talk about this,” he told Mansour. “They want this issue to go away. They want to continue to collect the benefits of these commercial ties, but they do not want to talk about that. I think it’s unacceptable. The stakes are too high.”

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Walt Disney, the studio that, on top of its own stellar brands, owns the Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel franchises, is a money-printing hit machine, but thanks to director Ana DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time, it is not a flawless one.

Despite the presence of the some of the biggest stars in the world (Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine), despite coming from a children’s novel beloved for decades, despite the second-to-none marketing machine that is the Magic Kingdom, the movie was an economic catastrophe.

Globally, not just here in North America, but worldwide, Wrinkle grossed just $127 million. After tanking out at $96 million domestically, a Disney movie starring Oprah Winfrey was only able to gross an additional $31 million in 20-plus other countries.

With a production and advertising budget that reports peg at somewhere between $150 million and $250 million, that means the red ink landed somewhere between $86 million and $186 million, according to Yahoo News.

As Breitbart News reported at the time, the crucial mistake the filmmakers and Disney made was removing the Christianity from what is essentially a Christian children’s book.

My point is not that this act of anti-Christian bigotry hurt the movie by offending moviegoers, but that this act of bigotry stripped Wrinkle of if its central themes, and by extension, of all the substance and human insight that comes with Christian themes, which are also universal themes. According to countless reviews, what was left was a confection of empty calories: lovely CGI on the outside and a black hole of meaningless spirituality on the inside.

Although the predominantly left-wing entertainment media is predisposed to give a black, female director like DuVernay every benefit of the doubt, Wrinkle was mostly panned by critics who found the film pretty but ultimately insignificant.

“[T]here’s something about ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ overall that doesn’t take flight. It doesn’t fall to the ground, either, just sort of hovers when it should soar. It’s conscientious. It’s watchable, and it’s never less than competent. But it seems to strive so hard to be inspirational, rather than letting the inspiration come through the story, that it becomes preachy and self-conscious,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle.

Writing at Insider, Kim Renfro said the “movie really suffers” from the decision to “ditch the book’s explicit Christian references.” As a result she found the movie “incomplete” and says that the “biblical inspirations could have (and should have) been replaced with a more cohesive plot that carried the film to its final climax.”

Even the far-left Vox admitted that the book was “deeply informed by its author’s Episcopal Christianity” which “the new Disney movie has excised.”

Hollywood’s hatred of Christianity comes with a price, but one the studios are willing to pay. Unfortunately for shareholders, Disney and DuVernay satisfying their own prejudices is more important than profits and the telling of a decent story.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday harshly rebuked the United States’ withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Iran nuclear deal, describing President Donald Trump’s pullout statement as “vulgar and commonplace.”

“The U.S. President lied at least ten times in his statement and threatened both the Iranian nation and the country’s political establishment,” Khamenei said in a statement posted to his official website, according to Radio Farda.

Khamenei’s official website translates his subsequent comment as “I answer him, as a representative of the Iranian population: ‘Donald Trump, you cannot lift one finger against us.’”

“Trump will whither away, perish, and his body will decompose: but, the Islamic Republic will still be thriving,” Khamenei added.

The supreme leader reportedly declared, “The U.S. wishes to tell the Islamic Republic what to do, but the Iranians are an independent nation and Americans cannot stand this.”

Khamenei went on to insult the other European members of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, and tell Trump to “go to hell with your failures” in Iraq and Syria.”

During his historic speech on Tuesday, Trump delivered a message “to the long-suffering people of Iran,” saying, “The people of America stand with you.” Trump continued:

It has now been almost 40 years since this dictatorship seized power and took a proud nation hostage. Most of Iran’s 80 million citizens have sadly never known an Iran that prospered in peace with its neighbors and commanded the admiration of the world. But the future of Iran belongs to its people. They are the rightful heirs to a rich culture and an ancient land, and they deserve a nation that does justice to their dreams, honor to their history and glory to God.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani was the first Iranian official to publicly react to America’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. He suggested the move was meaningless, saying, “From this moment on, the JCPOA (nuclear agreement) is between Iran and five countries. The plus one no longer exists and, under these circumstances, we have to wait and see how these six countries will react to this agreement.”

Radio Farda noted that Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament (or Majles) characterized Trump’s speech as “a political show” and said his words were “un-calculated and vulgar.”

The publication, as well as several others, reported that Larijani said Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization should be prepared to resume nuclear activity.

During Wednesday’s parliamentary session, several politicians set an American flag on fire and chanted “Death to America.” The lawmakers reportedly also torched a symbolic copy of the Iran deal before vowing to increase spending on the country’s ballistic missile program.

President Trump also stated on Tuesday that “America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail. We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. And we will not allow a regime that chants “Death to America” to gain access to the most deadly weapons on Earth.”

He added, “Today’s action sends a critical message. The United States no longer makes empty threats. When I make promises, I keep them.”

 

Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.