Trump Should Declassify How Chinese Communist Party Interfered in Our Election

President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House on Dec. 12, 2020. (Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)

Commentary

Politicians tackle debts and deficits, politicians deal with planning and zoning, politicians struggle with their civil service.

Statesmen, or stateswomen, however, are the politicians who take hold, grasp, and define the seminal moments of our times. They map out the course of history through surgical words and key actions. These words and actions stand to drive the statesman/stateswoman to glory, and with luck and historical hindsight, will even earn the begrudging respect of political foes and ideological opponents.

Lincoln gifted the world with the Gettysburg Address, 272 words that were backed with surgical action—blood and treasure spilled to forge a nation together and to free the slaves. Roosevelt spoke of and gave America a “New Deal” that has lasted over three-quarters of a century, while Eisenhower cautioned an innocent nation to beware of “the Military-Industrial Complex.” President Reagan, the truest and last important voice of the modern presidency in the 20th century, tore down the Soviet Empire without firing one bullet in active combat, and told Mr. Gorbachev, before any New York Times pundit ever foresaw the end of the Soviet Empire, to “Tear down these walls.”

Wunderbar—still music to my ears!

The symbiotic convergence between “East and West,” caused through technological and financial integration, has reached an inflection point of no return. East and West are converging and creating one culture, one world. Whether we like it or not, it could be argued with some legitimacy that the combination has now become unstoppable.

The defining issue of our era is this: Which of the two dominant ideologies will prevail in this, our latest bout with neofascist communism?

Will the Western ideal bring about a new Confucianism, a merged ideal that includes Eastern thoughts of forbearance and detachment, coupled with Western values of capitalism, multi-ethnic democracy, and human rights; or are we heading toward a “1984” or “Fahrenheit 451” world of neofascist communism anchored by technological and economic control, and fueled by the tyrannic methods developed through the -isms brought on by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and then later re-weaponized by the Chinese regime and Putin? The stakes couldn’t be any higher for any aspirant of freedom and democracy.

President Donald Trump’s appointment and continued support of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo followed his better instincts and wisdom as they relate to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Unfortunately, CCP enthusiasts within his own administration and White House slowed him in January 2020, on the grounds that the United States needed a new trade deal with China, a delay that lost America the opportunity to follow best practices and survive the COVID-19 pandemic in the same manner Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia have done.

Beijing has learned from Russian President Putin’s playbook. Using KGB-like tactics, the fascists appreciate that they can’t match American might through a direct toe-to-toe confrontation, so they now aim to corrupt the North American continent from the inside out.

When the West used both its culture and its intelligence infrastructure to disrupt communism, we offered the Eastern Bloc democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and capitalism. Many former Eastern Bloc countries have flourished under this new direction, and we say many, because unfortunately, Putin and Beijing have stopped their respective homelands and many satellite nations from progressing and advancing toward the human ideal of freedom and democracy.

Worse, our communist and fascist torturers have now pivoted “the game” to give the West a taste of the same tactics they’ve force-fed on dissidents and human rights advocates, who are continuously sidelined in the streets of Beijing and Moscow—the tactics are well-known—disruption, violence, infiltration, repression, and lies through the mediums of force, state-controlled media, technology, and corruption.

With these same tactics and means of planning and deliberation, Beijing and Putin aim to further murder our democracies from the inside—and sadly enough, they might pull it off.

CCP Infiltration

This is where our president has the opportunity to act quickly and decisively to work toward bringing an end to the destructive influences of the CCP’s corrosive political corruption methods.

The facts and infiltration are indisputable. On Dec. 5, 2020, China expert Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” publicly exposed the varied methods used by the Chinese Communist Party to corrupt the 2020 presidential election.

Chang confirmed that during the general election, the CCP tried to unseat Trump. He said there “was a massive disinformation campaign conducted, especially by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which is official—and [confirmed by] the Global Times, which is the Communist Party tabloid.”

Chang said “there were the troll and bot farm operations, which were actually quite massive. There was the Spamouflage Dragon network, which attacked the president on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. And we know that Twitter took down 174,000 fake Chinese accounts in June alone. So they really went after the Republican candidate.”

Frighteningly, Chang also confirmed that “the Chinese military—the People’s Liberation Army—actually based an intelligence unit in the then-open Houston consulate. From there, they used artificial intelligence and big data to identify Americans likely to participate in Antifa protests. And then they sent them videos through Tik-Tok on how to riot.”

It isn’t only academic experts on the Chinese Communist Party that have opined on CCP interference. In fact, prior to the election, then-Attorney General William Barr confirmed that the CCP was directly involved in corrupting the presidential election.

Indeed, in a Sept. 2, 2020, interview on CNN, AG Barr was asked about election security and who was the most assertive or aggressive nation in this regard.

“I believe it’s China,” Barr said. “China more than Russia right now.”

When asked why he made that assessment, Barr said he had “seen the intelligence” clearly suggesting that the CCP was a greater threat than Russia. “That’s what I concluded,” he said, adding that he couldn’t elaborate more on what is classified information.

Classified Information

Therein lies the key—classified information.

Now that the CCP has infiltrated the core of American democracy, it’s no longer sufficient or acceptable that only a small cadre of U.S. intelligence and military defense officials, running around scared in D.C., be the only good folks apprised of the CCP’s real and apprehended threat toward our way of life. Too many Americans are now dead because of Communist Party negligence.

There can and should be a method of rapidly declassifying enough of the raw intel to prepare and educate U.S. society in respect to the CCP’s existential threat, while at the same time protecting U.S. sources and intelligence-gathering methodologies. With all due respect, representatives and senators who sit on the intelligence committees no longer hold enough credibility and respect, notwithstanding any political party affiliation, with their own voters, to be the filters and disseminators of information to their constituents. That train left the station a long time ago.

In fact, in the middle of the Russia investigation, in May 2019, when so much disinformation against the president was being aired across the continent, Trump actually gave Barr sweeping powers to declassify intelligence in the Russia probe review. The chattering classes were obviously upset that true facts about the “so-called collusion” would see the light of day with the U.S. public and sought to dispel the presidential authority to “classify and declassify” information. Interestingly enough, the “executive’s” power in this regard appears to be sacrosanct, notwithstanding the false protests of the mainstream media.

Experts agree that the president, as commander-in-chief, is ultimately responsible for classification and declassification. When a person lower in the chain of command handles classification and declassification duties—which is the established methodology—it’s essentially because they have been delegated to do so by the president directly, or by an appointee chosen by the president. The majority ruling in the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court matter Department of the Navy v. Egan addressed this line of authority.

Clearly, the president can declassify.

Handing over that authority to an acting AG, seeking that “We, the People” finally all get to hear and learn the full truth about the CCP’s conduct in our 2020 elections within the next 20 days—pursuant and subject to a careful review that has assumed the proper protocols to protect intelligence-gathering assets and tools is critical, if not existential.

It seems to be the least we should all expect in words and deeds from a true statesman.

The coming words and actions on this issue would very well stand the test of time—just as the words and actions of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan cemented the future and continued standing of the American experience.

Joel Etienne is a human rights attorney and television producer who specializes in public affairs. Etienne represented The Epoch Times in its communications with CBC regarding the network’s negative portrayal of The Epoch Times.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.