It is well known that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), now under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping, has waged an unrestricted lawfare against the United States (U.S.) for many years in an attempt to undermine the rule of law and judicial independence. However, policy makers and the public in the U.S. are mostly unaware of the CCP’s strategies and the extent of its power inside U.S. judicial systems.
Undoubtedly, the CCP threat is the biggest existential threat to the national security of the United States. For decades, the CCP has been waging the war of lawfare: using infiltration and corruption to compromise targeted U.S. law firms, individual attorneys and judges, and government institutions such as the DOJ and FBI. This gives the CCP unprecedented power to influence legal proceedings here in the U.S. in favor of its authoritarian agenda. This article closely examines the historical context of the CCP’s lawfare against America, a current case study of the CCP’s malign influence, and why the New Federal State of China, a group of brave Chinese people fighting against the CCP, is a key ally to America in confronting the CCP threat.
Speaking at the Hudson Institute in July 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned: “We’ve now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours.”
The Whistleblower: Miles Guo
Previously a successful businessman in China, Guo Wengui, or Miles Guo, is recognized as the most prominent enemy of the CCP for starting and leading a movement aimed at overthrowing the Communist regime.
But for the U.S., Guo is an exceptional asset of unmatched strategic importance to U.S. national security. Guo has amassed firsthand knowledge of the CCP’s most closely guarded secrets: spending over three decades building relationships and collecting intelligence on critical former and current decision-makers within the CCP. In 2017, Guo made public his crusade against the CCP, launching a movement now known as the New Federal State of China (NFSC). Since then, NFSC has grown into an international movement with millions of supporters in China and America.
As the primary target of CCP’s malign influence here in America, Guo is victim to the largest kleptocracy case in DOJ’s history: a 2017 illegal influence campaign led by George Higginbotham, Senior Congressional Affairs Specialist at DOJ, seeking to illegally remove Guo from the U.S. According to unsealed court documents in the Justice Department’s investigation, when General Secretary Xi met with President Trump in 2017, Xi personally requested Guo’s extradition with Trump, describing it as a matter of utmost importance to him.
Guo has also been the subject of malicious lawsuits launched by individuals and entities in active collusion with the CCP, such as the Pacific Alliance Group, a Chinese investment fund founded by Shan Weijian, who has close ties to the CCP. None of this would have been possible without the willful assistance of corrupt U.S. law firms, who have become almost an extended arm of CCP’s oppressive ruling.
Modern-Day Bounty Hunters: All Eyes on the Prey
The CCP formally modified its position in 1992 and started permitting international law firms to open offices and conduct legal business in China. However, unlike in the U.S., China’s communist regime requires that “laws should respect the CCP; the law should be interpreted according to the CCP’s orders, directives, and interests, and the basic requirement for legal service personnel is to uphold the leadership of the party.” This would be comparable to one of the American political parties demanding that legislation and court rulings reflect its preferences (by some accounts, this is happening in the U.S. with increasing regularity). In addition, attorneys are not even permitted to use the Constitution of their own country as a source of law.
Law firms operating in and on behalf of China are directly impacted by the CCP’s negative influence.
In an astonishingly direct and obvious conflict against the interests and security of the United States, law firms operating in and on behalf of China are directly subject to the “malign influence” of the CCP. The operation is in addition to the “dissidents, political rivals, and critics” who have relied on our government’s laws to protect those requesting asylum from hostile foreign governments.
The CCP’s weaponization of the U.S. legal justice system to extend its influence in the U.S., including attempting to extradite Guo to China using extrajudicial means, “flies in the face of significant corroborated information supporting [Guo’s] fears and will naturally lead to a lack of confidence in the [judicial] process as well as unwarranted stress to [Guo] and his family, several who have been jailed and tortured by China,” said Aaron Mitchell, an attorney representing Guo.
Federal Title 8 U.S. Code# 1158 confers the protection of asylum to “any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality… who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Once an asylum application is filed, the U.S. Government is bound by law to protect the asylum seeker.
It seems this duty mandated by law is being willfully ignored by the Department of Justice, which played a pivotal role in furthering the CCP’s persecution of Guo in his ongoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the United States Bankruptcy Court in Connecticut (Cases Nos. 22-50073 and 22-05032).
Luc A. Despins: Inserting A Bounty Hunter in The Courthouse
The United States Trustee’s Office (UST), a division of the Department of Justice, was ordered by the Bankruptcy Court to appoint a Chapter 11 trustee to manage Mr. Guo’s assets throughout the legal processes on June 15, 2022. Joe D. Whitley, an attorney, subsequently underwent a background investigation and executed a sworn Declaration of Disinterestedness under penalty of perjury before UST recommended him for appointment as Trustee on June 30, 2022.
Five days later, in a historically important action, UST withdrew the nomination and instead nominated Luc A. Despins, a Partner of Paul Hastings LLP, a law firm with a significant presence in China and Hong Kong.
According to the letter by Mitchell, Guo’s attorney, the U.S. Trustee’s unusual action to withdraw its appointment of Mr. Whitley was spurious: “On June 30, 2022, just before the 4th of July weekend, the UST in light of its excessive delays in appointing a trustee for this matter, filed a motion for an expedited hearing for the court to approve Mr. Whitley as the trustee. This motion was granted the same day it was filed, with an expedited hearing scheduled on July 5, 2022. Just hours before the expedited hearing was to begin and with no advance notice to the debtor (and possibly all parties), the UST took the unusual action of unilaterally withdrawing its Notice of Appointment of a trustee and its request for Court approval of the proposed appointment.”
When asked why they were making their decision, the UST declined to respond, claiming the “government privilege.”
Mitchell asked in light of the information previously presented by the debtor as well as information available to the U.S. Department of Justice demonstrating that the debtor is a high-level political target of the authoritarian ruling Chinese Communist Party for an explanation of “how the U.S. Trustee, believes that the trustee of a firm [Paul Hastings, LLP] with a significant presence in China and Hong Kong and which has done significant business representing Chinese-controlled state entities, can remain a neutral and disinterested party with the ability to avoid undue influence and interference from the Government of China.”
There are serious conflicts of interest in having Luc A. Despins, a partner of Paul Hastings, as trustee.
Among Paul Hasting’s clients are some of the biggest state-owned-enterprises in China and Steve Wynn, a U.S. businessman charged by the DOJ for his role in the 2017 scheme seeking the illegal removal of Guo from the U.S. Luc Despins is also personally involved in Paul Hastings’ representation of Pacific Alliance Group (PAG) in a $671M deal for Spring REIT. The HNA Group, BioNTech SE, Evergrande, Binance, and several other businesses associated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are also among the corporations represented by Paul Hastings.
The Chinese Communist Party controls the permits needed to keep Paul Hastings’ legal offices open in China and Hong Kong. Effectively, Paul Hastings and Luc Despins, a partner of Paul Hastings, are under the CCP’s financial control to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Financial control enables the CCP to put significant pressure and influence on legal firms like this to accomplish their goals, as history has shown.
The UST has demonstrated that it cannot locate and choose an impartial trustee in this case.
The DOJ is now prosecuting casino magnate Steve Wynn for operating as an unregistered foreign agent of the CCP owing to his attempt to get Guo extradited under fear of losing his gaming licenses in Macao. As a component of the DOJ and having access to DOJ investigations establishing Guo as the prime target for the CCP, the UST has demonstrated its inability to locate and choose an impartial trustee in this matter, supposing it was incompetence rather than maliciousness.
The appointment of Luc Despins illustrates the tactics of the CCP’s unrestricted warfare to infiltrate American judicial systems and raises serious questions regarding the impartiality of the UST and the DOJ.
Mitchel’s letter continues, “At the hearing, the Bankruptcy Judge pointed out the unusual nature of this action by the UST and questioned the UST’s legal authority to do so. The UST did not provide a detailed explanation for this rash action at the hearing, nor was Mr. Whitley called to explain the conflict to all parties and the court. The UST swept Mr. Whitley away from the debtor, the parties, and the public.”
When asked why they were making their decision, the UST declined to respond, claiming “government privilege.”
Guilty until proven innocent: Americans have lost their trust in DOJ and FBI
In August, senior editor Chris Bedford at The Federalist explained to Fox News why Americans should be holding the Justice Department and FBI accountable: “Right now the plurality of Independents, according to polling, and the majority of Republicans are saying, ‘Hold on, FBI. The ball’s in your court. You show us what you have because right now, we don’t trust you.’”
In a 2022 convention of States-Trafalgar survey, 46.2% of respondents who were questioned about the Justice Department and the FBI claimed they were “too political, crooked, and not to be trusted.” The DOJ and FBI are “too political, crooked, and not to be trusted,” according to 68.3% of republicans and over half of those indicating they were unaffiliated in the poll.
Addressing The Threat
The CCP’s infiltration directly violates our country’s sovereignty and national security. The moral leadership of America as the leader of the free world is marred by the presence of deep-rooted CCP infiltration in the American legal system. However, prosecuting people caught in the act of breaking the law, such as Steve Wynn, merely addresses the symptoms rather than the underlying problem. To restore the integrity of the rule of law, Congress must investigate and unearth the true and exact extent of the CCP’s infiltration inside the DOJ and identify individuals inside the DOJ working in collusion with the CCP.
Before Kevin McCarthy could be elected as Speaker of the House, the U.S. House Freedom Caucus agreed to several conditions, one of which was to “look into the weaponization of the FBI and other government institutions.” To combat the weaponization of the American legal system and stop the CCP from tracking down and punishing dissidents like Guo who have fled to the United States for safety, our legislators must implement sanctions and/or other measures.
Miles Guo, the founder of the NFSC, issued this call to action: “If the newly elected Speaker of the House is serious about taking on the CCP with substantive actions, he must seize all CCP’s overseas assets, stop the U.S. media, technology companies, Wall Street, law firms, etc. from continuing their collusion with the CCP, and have the Congress thoroughly investigate the CCP enablers lurking inside American government agencies, especially in judiciary sector.” For the sake of democracy, make it so.
