The home of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement has received $54.6 million in anonymous Chinese gifts from 2014 through 2019
UPenn’s DC located Penn Biden Center For Diplomacy and Global Engagement, named after Joe Biden, who was selected to lead the center after his term as Vice President, has drummed up controversy as a government watchdog group has called for an investigation into over $54 million in Chinese gifts received by the University.
From the New York Post:
The Ivy League college raked in 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, according to public records.
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. Joe Biden, whose term as vice president had just ended, was to lead the center and was also named a professor at the university.
The watchdog group, the Virginia-based National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC,) calls for the US attorney handling the Hunter Biden probe, David Weiss, to launch an investigation into the suspicious money, as there is reason to believe that it is tied to Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China. Although the University denies that any of the Chinese money went towards the Center, or that it was solicited for the Penn Biden Center, the NLPC believes that it requires investigation.
“We’ve asked … Weiss to pursue the larger network of individuals and institutions who benefited from millions doled out by foreign interests connected to Hunter Biden’s work in China and Ukraine,” said Tom Anderson, director of the NLPC’s Government Integrity Project.
In its 12-page complaint, the watchdog cited a 2017 text found on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop that CEFC China Energy Co, one of the firms that Hunter Biden had a financial stake in, wanted to lobby politicians in the US but did not want to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), required for all foreign lobbyists.
“We don’t want to have to register as foreign agents under the FCPA [sic] which … is much more expansive than people who should know choose not to know,” reads the May 1, 2017, text sent from Hunter Biden to his former business partner Tony Bobulinski.
Suspicious texts about Chinese lobbying recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop, coupled with anonymous donations from China to a Biden-affiliated Ivy League University around the same time certainly does arouse suspicion. Other Ivy League schools, such as Harvard and Yale, are already under investigation for potentially not reporting their own donations (coincidentally also from China) correctly, but it is yet to be announced whether Weiss will look into UPenn’s shady donations.
