by One of the House Republicans’ top investigators promised he wouldn’t spend his time wading through the feverish swamps of conspiracy theory “unless we have proof.”
But just days after assuming a powerful new position and with no evidence to speak of, House oversight committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) is amping up a wild conspiracy theory: that the former executive assistant to Joe Biden, Kathy Chung, is actually a foreign agent working for the Communist Party of China.
The combined effort of top House Republicans and the right-wing media turned a relatively trivial classified-documents scandal into baseless xenophobic fantasies.
The allegations and insinuations stem from confidential documents from Biden’s vice presidency that the FBI and Biden’s attorneys recently recovered from his former DC office and his home in Delaware. Federal investigators are probing the situation now, as these are classified documents recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. (In the latter case, Trump spent months resisting efforts by the authorities to recover the documents.)
NBC News reported earlier this month that federal investigators had interviewed Chung, that now jobs to the Pentagon as deputy director of protocol, as part of their review of recovered classified documents. A few days later, The Washington Post reported that Chung she had expressed concern that she may have been inadvertently involved in moving or storing confidential documents, which were eventually recovered by the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania in Washington, DC. Both news organizations cited unnamed sources.
Chung’s attorney, Bill Taylor, confirmed to HuffPost that he spoke with federal investigators and that in January 2017, she was involved in packing Biden’s vice presidential office, the boxes of which then made their way to the Biden Center. Chung didn’t know there was classified material in the boxes, Taylor said.
There is no public evidence that the South Korean-born Chung has any relationship with China or its government. But that hasn’t stopped Comer from toying with the conspiracy theories of right-wing media anchors.
Tuesday on Newsmaxhost Jenn Pellegrino asked Comer, “Do you think Chung’s connection to Hunter Biden, possibly the Communist Party of China, and his role in the transfer of these classified documents is something the House Oversight Committee should investigate?”
“We are investigating this,” Comer replied. “It is very concerning and disturbing to see the many ties the Biden family has to the CCP.”
While he didn’t name Chung specifically, Comer later referred to the classified document moving process: “When you start tracing back, you see that there are people who had very suspicious ties to some of our opponents who were involved in the moving process. .”
Comer did not respond to HuffPost’s questions about what evidence he had to support his cable insinuations about Chung, nor did reps from Fox News or Newsmax.
Chung’s lawyer blew up the forward line. “He’s misinformed and absurd,” Taylor said. “He’s especially obnoxious in a partisan atmosphere like this, where people have no qualms about suggesting someone is a traitor without any evidence, and frankly knowing it’s not true.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has tied a multitude of issues to Hunter Biden.
Comer repeated the talking points in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News Wednesday and attempted to link the story to President Hunter Biden’s son, saying “there is definitely a connection” between the documents and the younger Biden’s affairs in China.
Bartiromo said Chung was “overseeing the packing of this,” referring to the president’s documents. “Do we know if he is reporting to the CCP about all this?” she asked.
“We are investigating this. We are looking at at least three different people that Hunter Biden was directly involved with who have very close ties to the Communist Party of China,” Comer said.
The question and answer between Comer and Bartiromo has been going on for days. On January 22, Bartiromo presented an interview with Comer saying “we don’t know if [Chung] he was ultimately reporting to the Communist Party of China.” Bartiromo asked Comer about “Joe Biden’s ties to communist China” and whether he dictated how Biden treats the country.
“Most Americans would be shocked to see how many ties the Biden family has to people directly affiliated with the Communist Party of China,” Comer said.
It’s especially obnoxious in a partisan atmosphere like this, where people have no qualms about suggesting someone is a traitor without any proof, and frankly knowing it’s not true.Bill Taylor, Kathy Chung’s attorney
Conspiracy theories about Biden’s former aide have been brewing for months on the right-wing web, sparked by various email exchanges with Chung reportedly taken from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
In one exchange, Chung emailed Hunter Biden about accepting a job in his father’s vice presidential office. He had previously worked for the former Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), a longtime staffer and friend of Joe Biden who ultimately recommended her for the job, the Post reported for the first time. Taylor confirmed these details to HuffPost, noting that Chung and Biden’s son met when they both worked at the Commerce Department.
“Call if/when you want me to tell dad you’re interested,” Hunter Biden reported she told Chung about the job in a 2012 email, asking in another, “Would you like me to see when you can meet the vice president?”
In a 2015 email, Chung sent invitations to a State Department luncheon co-hosted by Biden and then Secretary of State John Kerry in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping. In February 2017, one month after Joe Biden left the White House, Hunter Biden invited Chung to work with him; she reportedly responded that she was trying to “stay” with Joe Biden. Chung has never worked for Hunter Biden, Taylor said.
Referring to these emails, Newsmax’s Pellegrino exclaimed in his interview with Comer, “Hunter’s laptop continues to give us a lot!”
None of the emails between Chung and Hunter Biden offer any sign that Chung is or was a secret Chinese agent rather than a regular mid-level political aide. Yet that is the narrative currently blessed by the top Republican on the Oversight Committee. Comer is a well-known master to tie everything back to Hunter Biden.
“Hunter Biden was in charge of picking the people to pack the boxes and transport the boxes from point A to point B,” he said in Bartiromo Wednesday. (“That’s not true,” Taylor told HuffPost.)
On Thursday, Comer recited the same line to Sean Hanity: “In our investigation we learn that Hunter played a role in determining who would actually be tasked with taking documents from the Vice President’s office to the first drop-off point for those documents.”
Separately in that interview, Hannity referred to a reported email from 2015 from Chung to Hunter Biden, sent the next day the funeral of Hunter’s brother Beau. In it, Chung includes a list of phone numbers of high-profile people, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and several senators and congressmen.
Conservatives seized an email from Kathy Chung to Hunter Biden following her brother Beau’s funeral, which included contact information for prominent figures.
This email in particular has been friends with the right-wing web. Trump’s pardon recipient Michael Flynn gushed a few days before the 2020 presidential election, “Any foreign power would like to have this information!!!”
EG News, a China-focused website linked to Steve Bannon, published an article the same day titled, with no evidence, “Hunter Biden Sold Clinton Phone Numbers to CCP.” The article refers to Chinese Internet personality linked to Bannon Lu De, whose real name is Wang Dinggang. The New York Times and NBC News have reported that Wang is the source of several rumors about Hunter Biden.
The G News post said that “the purpose of sending this email to Hunter is so he can forward the telephone directory to the CCP.” (“Crazy and absurd,” Taylor said.)
In his interview with Hannity, Comer dove down the rabbit hole.
Hunter Biden, he said, would “try to prove his worth to these people in these other countries who were paying him these huge sums of money,” in part by “showing them he had cell phone numbers for powerful individuals.”
As Fox News’ music output swelled, Comer was quick to wrap up his point: “Influence selling! This is what we are investigating and every day more and more evidence is emerging to show that this family was involved and that Joe Biden was an integral part of it.
