A Korean-American woman is being baselessly smeared as some kind of Chinese agent because it helps advance the right-wing fever dream of destroying the Bidens.
It’s all part of the MAGA effort to dishonestly insert Hunter Biden into the small number of classified documents found in President Biden’s home and office and turn it into some kind of national security scandal – and the hell with the facts. And never mind that Donald Trump deliberately took hundreds of classified materials, stashed them in his country club and, unlike Biden, refused to return them.
As HuffPost explained, Kathy Chung was an executive assistant to then-Vice President Joe Biden and is now deputy director of protocol at the Pentagon. But in 2017, she helped pack up Biden’s office. Her attorney has said she was unaware of any classified material in the boxes. But Rep. James Comer, the new Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, is helping to validate and amplify right-wing media’s evidence-free suggestions she’s a Chinese agent involved in some big Biden-family plot.
Comer repeated the talking points in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo Wednesday and attempted to link the story to the president’s son Hunter Biden, saying “there most certainly is a connection” between the documents and the younger Biden’s business dealings in China.
Bartiromo said Chung was “overseeing the packing of this,” referring to the president’s documents. “Do we know if she’s reporting back to the CCP about any of this?” she asked.
“We’re looking into that. We’re looking into at least three different people that Hunter Biden was directly involved with that have very close ties to the Chinese Communist Party,” Comer said.
The back-and-forth between Comer and Bartiromo has been going on for days. On Jan. 22, Bartiromo introduced an interview with Comer by saying “we do not know if [Chung] was ultimately reporting back to the Chinese Communist Party.” Bartiromo asked Comer about “the links between Joe Biden and Communist China” and whether it had dictated the way Biden treats the country.
“Most Americans would be shocked if they saw how many connections the Biden family has to people directly affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party,” Comer said.
Comer repeated similar BS claims to Sean Hannity, HuffPost notes.
The so-called basis underlying the smear is that Chung and Hunter Biden seem to have a long-time relationship and because emails between the two were reportedly found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. According to The Washington Post, it was Hunter Biden who alerted Chung to the executive assistant job. HuffPost characterizes one particular 2015 email as providing the most “chum” for the right-wing web. The day after the funeral of Beau Biden, Chung sent brother Hunter a list of phone numbers of former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and several senators and congressmembers.
But there is no evidence Chung has any connection to the Chinese Party.
To Republicans, she’s fair game anyway. She is Asian, she’s a Democrat and she has a friendly relationship with Hunter Biden. So she deserves whatever they smear her with and whatever consequences ensue, they obviously think.
