Flirting with the CCP (Book Review)

[Valin]

Law & Liberty

Dr. Ralph L. DeFalco III

Mar. 21 2022

Peter Schweizer is no stranger to the seamy side of American life and politics.

Beginning with his 2011 book Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of us to Prison, Schweizer has routinely uncovered instances not just of malfeasance and self-dealing, but of deeply rooted, seemingly endemic corruption among America’s political class and ruling elites. Extortion (2013), Clinton Cash (2016), Secret Empires (2018), and Profiles in Corruption (2020) are more than one-off exposés. In the great tradition of American muckraker journalists, Schweizer’s diligently researched and detailed works caused a furor when they were released. Clinton Cash provided enough convincing evidence of “pay-to-play” dealings to prompt an FBI investigation that later roiled the 2020 Presidential Campaign. The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act was passed in 2012 after Schweizer appeared on the television program 60 Minutes to talk about his findings in Throw Them All Out.

Readers of Schweizer’s newest book, Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, will come away with the conviction that even more needs to be done to root out corruption and self-dealing, not only on Capitol Hill, but in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and in the halls of the Ivy League. Schweizer and a team of forensic investigators spent more than a year combing through corporate records, legal filings, financial transactions, FBI and Congressional reports, and other documents to research this book. Their findings are the jaw-dropping story of how leading Americans have become unwitting and, more often, witting collaborators with the repressive Chinese government for personal gain. This is a book that reveals the Machiavellian design and the broad reach of Beijing’s long-term strategy of courting and buying influence in the corridors of power in the United States.

China’s Strategy

Red-Handed currently sits atop the New York Times best-seller list and is likely to remain there for some time as the book attracts readers on both sides of the ideological spectrum. The author has been skewered by some critics as a mouthpiece for the right wing of the American political scene. Schweizer has even described himself as a conservative libertarian and has earned the enmity of voices in the media and on the political left. But there is no conservative bias that can color the work of exposing corruption in high places. Red-Handed is a book that exposes how both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, those on the far right and the far left, are all engaged in sometimes naïve and often heinous self-dealing with China.

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I quote I recall from many many Many years ago

"If we could sell one bottle of coke to every Chinese, think of the money we could make!"