TRANSCRIPT:
McCabe: In his new book Red-Handed, investigative journalist Peter Schweizer documents how the senate’s top republican, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, is tied through his wife to the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
He also told The Star News Network that his wife, Elaine Chao, as transportation secretary, used her official position to help the shipping business of her father, James Chao.
Schweizer: So when Mitch McConnell married Elaine Chao, he married into a family that had very substantial connections on Mainland China with the Chinese Communist Party.
James Chao, who was Elaine’s father, that would be Senator Mitch McConnell’s father-in-law, grew up with Jiāng Zémín, who was the premier of China in the 1990s.
McCabe: Schweizer said McConnell, in addition to receiving millions of dollars in political contributions from members of the Chao family, also received a massive gift from his billionaire father-in-law.
Schweizer: When it comes to Mitch McConnell, it’s pretty clear his financial fortunes are fused with those of the Chao family. In fact, James Chao gave him a gift more than a decade ago of between $5 and $25 million dollars, and that, you know, basically quadrupled his net worth overnight.
And when Elaine Chao became the transportation secretary, when she took official delegations as transportation secretary to China, she planned to and wanted to bring her sister and her father along on those trips.
So you have this fusing of the Chao family and Mitch McConnell to the Chinese state. And it creates a circumstance where if Mitch McConnell were to do something that Beijing did not like, they could literally destroy the business overnight.
McCabe: Peter Schweizer’s research into the McConnell-Chao family business and their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party begged the question, that if McConnell has to choose between the fortunes of the American people or the billions at stake in his own family fortune, who would he choose? Reporting for The Star News Network, this is Neil W. McCabe.
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Photo “Peter Schweizer” by The Star News Network.
