In a line of query that should have been taken up by Congress a long time ago, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rep. James Comer of Kentucky have asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to clarify just what the Justice Department knows about the China links of various environmental organizations busy lobbying the U.S. to initiate laws that will hurt the U.S. economy in the name of "going green."
Among these, according to their letter, which can be read at The Daily Caller, are the foreign ties and Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) papers of the environmental groups that have successfully lobbied members of Congress and regulatory agencies to ban gas stoves, despite the absence of evidence that there is anything environmentally harmful about them.
Cruz and Comer called for information about the FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) status of groups such as the National Resources Defense Council (NDRC), which was named in bid to ban gas stoves, as well as groups with names like RMI, Climate Imperative Foundation, Rewiring America, and/or Windward Fund.
They cited the recent case of Russians getting caught in the act of funding radical environmental groups, and noted that it was verified by a House committee in 2019 (leaving off that it was led by Democrats at the time) so the activity is nothing new.
“Russian agents created and spread propagandaon U.S. social media platforms in an obvious attempt to influence the U.S. energy market,” in part through “covertly funding radical environmental groups opposed to fossil fuels.”
If they wanted to go further, they also might have named Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire with a Roussauvian-romantic outlook about the New World (ironically, Rousseau was also from his part of Switzerland) who certainly has no loyalty to the U.S. yet who donates to causes that find their way into Democrat coffers, getting Democrats on the money hook through environmentalism.
As RealClearPolitics's Philip Wegmann wrote here:
Wyss is the Swiss billionaire behind what the New York Times described last year as "a daisy chain of opaque organizations" that supported a number of left-leaning environmental groups and progressive causes. According to the Times, the recipients of those funds later backed progressive causes almost exclusively and helped Democrats as they regained control of the White House. As RealClearPolitics first reported, Wyss is not a U.S. citizen, a fact that had remained a public mystery despite the hundreds of billions of dollars he has spent to influence American politics. Wyss is also a longtime associate of Podesta.
I wrote commentary on that report here.
Why does this focus on foreign agent registration matter?
Because the Chicoms have sent their agents all over to gather information about and influence U.S. policy, too. From straight-out espionage recently seen in the U.S. Navy, to the infiltration of corporations to steal corporate secrets, to the seeding of academia with their supporters and money, to that balloon maneuver to gather intelligence about interior U.S. military bases, to the honeypot spies sleeping with U.S. politicians such as once-House intelligence committee member Eric Swalwell, the Chinese are very interested in quietly controlling what the U.S. does. They'd like nothing better than to bring the great U.S. economy low, and see great tools for themselves, within wokesterism, open borders, Washington swamp consultancies and contractors, university science programs, and certainly the green movement.
It is probably significant to this green maneuver that the ChiComs have sought to acquire U.S. energy assets, too, through the offices of Hunter Biden. They seem to have financed green energy actors to weaken U.S. energy security and self-sufficiency, and moved to swoop in on actual U.S. energy assets that are worth something. That's quite a power game.
The fact that the greenie lobby is so strong and influential within the easily-purchased, corruption-laden Biden administration, is particularly worth examination from Congress because polls repeatedly show that Americans consider green issues coming in at the rock bottom of their priorities. Why would such unimportant issues have such priority power and sway in Washington if the public doesn't even care about them? Might that be an indicator of potential foreign agent influence? The fact that China has shown itself to be very very aggressive on these matters is added fuel.
Cruz and Comer are two of the sharpest legal minds in Congress and may well be onto something very important. Are these powerful environmental groups with Chinese funding acting on behalf of the Chicoms and their agenda, and if so, have they properly registered as foreign agents? If not, why not? And if they should register. why has the Justice Department been so indifferent to this problem if what Cruz and Comer are charging is true?