Trustless Trustee: Weaponization of the DOJ by the Chinese Communist Party

New York City, New York Feb 6, 2023 (Issuewire.com) - It's no secret that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), currently led by General Secretary Xi Jinping, has engaged in unrestricted warfare against the United States for decades in a massive effort to become the world's sole superpower. Yet little is known by U.S. lawmakers and the public of the CCP's tactics and the scale of its influence inside its own government institutions.

That war of "malign influence," infiltration, and lawfare has grown exponentially in scope and threat level--especially over the last few years--making the CCP threat, by many accounts, the biggest existential challenge to America's national sovereignty today.

In July of 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Walter Russell Mead, Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship for the Hudson Institute, "We've now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours," and "Over the past decade, we've seen economic espionage cases with a link to China increase by approximately 1,300 percent."1

The US House of Representatives Takes Action

The U.S. legislature must address this serious "lawfare" threat through investigations, legislation and other means at its disposal, and it seems that the process has finally begun in earnest.

The U.S. House of Representatives showed their concerns in a rare bipartisan vote on January 10 to create a new Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the CCP. As reported by The Epoch Times, "A succession of speakers from both parties extolled creation of the new panel, with Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) telling colleagues that 'this select committee will examine the threats from the Chinese Communist Party with a fine-tooth comb and expose them for the American people and for the whole world to fully understand.'"5

No one understands the plans and methods better than prominent Chinese dissident, Mr. Miles Guo. He's intimately familiar with the CCP because he's been their primary target. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Some U.S. national security officials view Mr. Guo, who claims to have potentially valuable information on top Chinese officials and business magnates and on North Korea, as a useful bargaining chip to use with Beijing."2

As the highest-profile defector from Communist China, Guo is an invaluable asset of unparalleled strategic importance of U.S. national security. Guo has spent nearly three decades inside the small yet exclusive circle of both past and present decision-makers of the CCP, accumulating personal knowledge of the CCP's most hidden secrets that are indispensable to our understanding of America's arch nemesis: the CCP.

And the CCP has been abusing the American judicial system to silence Mr. Guo through infiltration, bribery and threats.

All Eyes on the Prey: Modern-Day Bounty Hunters

In 1992, the CCP officially changed its policy and began allowing foreign law firms to establish offices and practice law 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."1 This would be like one of the U.S. political parties demanding that laws and legal decisions conform to the desires of that party (by some accounts, this is happening in the U.S. with increasing regularity). Furthermore, lawyers are not even allowed to cite their own constitution as a source of law.

Law firms doing business in and on behalf of China are subject directly to the "malign influence" of the CCP in a shockingly direct and obvious conflict against the interests and security of the United States, not to mention the "dissidents, political rivals, and critics"1 who have trusted our government's laws protecting those seeking asylum from hostile foreign governments.

The CCP's weaponization of U.S. legal justice system to extend its influence in the U.S.--including attempting to extradite Guos back 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 application for asylum is filed, the U.S. Government is bound by law to protect the asylum seeker.

It appears this legal protection for asylum seekers is being actively violated in Mr. Guo's current Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceedings in the United States Bankruptcy Court in Connecticut (Case No. 22-50073 and 22-05032) by none other than a branch of the Department of Justice itself.

Inserting a Bounty Hunter in the Courthouse: Luc A. Despins

On June 15, 2022, the Bankruptcy Court entered an order directing the United States Trustee's Office (UST)--a branch of the Department of Justice--to appoint a Chapter 11 trustee to oversee Mr. Guo's assets during court proceedings. Attorney Joe D. Whitley was vetted and signed a sworn Declaration of Disinterestedness under penalty of perjury, after which UST nominated Mr. Whitley for appointment as Trustee on June 30, 2022.

Five days later, in an unprecedented move, UST withdrew the nomination, and recommended Luc A. Despins, a Partner of Paul Hastings, LLC, a firm with a significant presence in China and Hong Kong, which has done significant business representing CCP-controlled state entities.

According to a letter by Mitchell, 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 on 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."

Mitchell asked for an explanation of "how the U.S. Trustee, 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, believes that the trustee of a firm [Paul Hastings, LLC] 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."  

The conflicts of interest in having Luc A. Despins, a partner of Paul Hastings, LLC as trustee are many.

Despins has developed business relations with PAG in a $671M bid for Spring REIT. According to sources, entities represented by Paul Hastings include HNA Group, BioNTech SE, Evergrande, Binance and many other companies tied with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Not only is the Chinese Communist Party a client of Paul Hastings, they also control the licenses to keep their law offices open in both China and Hong Kong. Effectively, the CCP controls the purse strings to hundreds of millions of dollars for Paul Hastings and Mr. Despins as a partner in Paul Hastings. This allows the CCP to exert tremendous influence and pressure on law firms like this to achieve their objectives--as indeed they already have.

The UST, as part of the DOJ, is aware that the DOJ is currently suing casino tycoon Steve Wynn for acting as an unregistered foreign agent of China due to his attempt to have Mr. Guo extradited under threat of losing his gambling licenses in Macao.2 At best, assuming it was incompetence rather than malice, the UST has shown that it is incapable of identifying and appointing a disinterested trustee in this case.

The appointment of Despins has obvious conflicts of interest and also reflects the infiltration of the U.S. judiciary system by the CCP using unrestricted warfare tactics.

The letter continues, "At the hearing, the Bankruptcy Judge pointed out the unusual nature of this action by the UST and questioned the UST 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 simply swept Mr. Whitley away from the Debtor, the parties, and the public." 

Asked to explain their rationale, the UST refused to answer, citing "government privilege." In the present political climate, and in light of revelations such as those brought to light from Elon Musk's Twitter drops, the American people may not accept such a lack of transparency.

In August, The Federalist senior editor Chris Bedford explained to Fox News why Americans should be holding the Justice Department and FBI accountable:7 "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.'"

Former Trump White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said on CNN that the FBI and the DOJ have "lost the benefit of the doubt" with Republicans in the U.S. "I think if you're a conservative Republican who follows politics, the FBI and the DOJ especially have lost the benefit of the doubt. Because of the way they have behaved in the past, the burden is on them to actually show information"8 justifying their actions.

According to a 2022 Convention of States-Trafalgar poll,9 when asked for their opinion on the Department of Justice and the FBI, 46.2% of respondents said they are "too political, corrupt, and not to be trusted." The poll had 68.3% of Republicans and almost half of people reporting no party affiliation saying the DOJ and FBI are "too political, corrupt, and not to be trusted."

The Biggest Kleptocracy Case In DOJ History: CCP Infiltration

Because Guo has worked tirelessly to expose the CCP's "hunting dogs," including their "legal beagle" lapdogs, it has become increasingly difficult for these criminals to hide their conflicts of interest and payoffs. This is why Xi's CCP has engaged middlemen within the U.S. legal system--government officials, law firms, lawyers, journalists, lobbyists, and more--who are attempting to extradite Guo back to China; this is also why family and associates of Guo still in China have been brutally persecuted, arrested and imprisoned.

Guo has worked ceaselessly for years to alert the U.S. and the world about CCP's long-planned scheme to undermine the U.S. as the world's superpower and replace it with CCP's authoritarian regime. As a whistleblower, Guo has perhaps received more attention from the CCP than from the U.S. government. Court documents reveal that as early as May 2017, high-ranking CCP officials worked constantly with its unregistered agents in an effort to deport Miles out of the U.S. back to China.

In 2017, Guo brought to light the secret plans of the CCP as detailed in two programs: BGY (an acronym for Blue, Gold, and Yellow) and 3F (Foment weakness, Foment chaos and Foment the destruction of America).

Blue represents an array of technology-related tactics including hacking, malign social media influence campaigns, media control, spying and surveillance. The CCP hackers are sophisticated enough to breach even the highest security databases, including those that control U.S. power and other critical infrastructure. These hackers have nearly unlimited black budgets and the organizational flexibility afforded by the CCP's other operations. They can also access your detailed financial records, personal health data, your daily activity, and location, as well as the potential to develop AI-determined estimates on the individuals' vulnerabilities to blackmail, corruption, or even simple spearphishing.

The CCP has been harvesting the data of millions of unsuspecting individuals in innocuous-looking mobile apps like TikTok and WeChat and by selling its Trojan-horse-like surveillance camera systems to the world.10

Gold represents money and bribery using direct or indirect financial benefits to influence and control individuals, institutions, and businesses.

Sometimes that influence is indirect, as may be the case with the recent revelation that the University of Pennsylvania received a total of $54.6 million from 2014 through June 2019 in donations from China, including $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016. "Most of the anonymous donations came after the university announced in February 2017 that it would create the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement" according to the New York Post. "Joe Biden, whose term as vice president had just ended, was to lead the center and was also named a professor at the university."3

Yellow represents the use of "honey traps" to compromise espionage targets. One well-known example is that of Representative Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., who had a relationship with a woman suspected of being a Chinese espionage operative. After federal investigators met with Swalwell in 2015 and gave him a "defense briefing," he broke off ties with the suspected "honey trap" spy.

"However," as the New York Post reported, "Swalwell wouldn't be the first or last political figure to be "honey-trapped"--with multiple former intelligence officials surmising that such schemes carried out by Chinese spies have long played out on U.S. soil, and remain ongoing."

"I can say with a high level of confidence that there are many more of these women out there," Daniel Hoffman, a retired CIA Senior Clandestine Services Officer, told Fox News. "China's MO is to flood the zone."4

China's BGY Program is a direct violation of our nation's sovereign interests and a threat to our national security. Its presence in the American justice system is a stain on the good will America needs to maintain in its relationships within the international community. However, prosecution of those violators caught in the act treats the symptoms without addressing the cause, ostensibly costing American taxpayers millions of dollars and tying up DOJ agents that could be addressing other threats. Enforcement, as opposed to prevention, also does not protect the victims of these crimes.

Addressing the Threat

One of the stipulations negotiated by the U.S. House Freedom Caucus before Kevin McCarthy could be voted in as Speaker of the House was "to look into the weaponization of the FBI and other government organizations." It is incumbent, then, that our legislators enact sanctions and/or other responses to confront the weaponization of the U.S. legal system and prevent the CCP from hunting and persecuting dissidents like Guo who have come to the U.S. for sanctuary.

As Founder of the New Federal State of China (NFSC), Guo has been providing the U.S. with crucial assistance in its battle against the CCP. NFSC's mission is simple: Taking down the Chinese Communist party. As a significant number of  NFSC members are American citizens or residents, NFSC is concerned with preventing what they or their families have experienced in China from taking place in the United States. The organization is funded by two foundations: the Rule of Law Foundation, a 501(c)(3), and The Rule of Law Society, a 501(c)(4). Each of the foundations has its own independent board of directors and mission statement.

Miles Guo issued this call to action on GETTR: "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."

Speaker McCarthy, make it so.

Postscript

Evaluating the specific case of the CCP's persecution of a Chinese resident who has been providing valuable whistle-blowing intel is in the best interests of United States national security. FreedomTalk is taking a deep dive into the case and will be unpacking the details of this attempt by the CCP to extradite a protected dissident back to China by lawfare and force.