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Former Reagan National Security Council Senior Director Roger Robinson Jr. weighs in.
Biden admin: Chinese investments in federal retirement fund ‘unfitting’
Former Reagan National Security Council Senior Director Roger Robinson Jr. weighs in.
Elite capture is a battle front in Communist China’s unrestricted warfare being waged on America and the free world. Join us for this week’s panel discussion from the Committee on the Present Danger: China as we expose American leaders and influencers who are beholden to the CCP and help enable and excuse its transnational crimes against humanity to the detriment of America.
Biden admin concedes Chinese investments in federal retirement fund are ‘unfitting’
Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang on federal employees investing their retirement funds into Chinese-backed companies, American tech companies pulling production out of China and the Biden admin reviewing tariffs imposed on China.
Jun. 03, 2022 – 7:52 – Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang on federal employees investing their retirement funds into Chinese-backed companies, American tech companies pulling production out of China and the Biden admin reviewing tariffs imposed on China.
WASHINGTON — Despite bipartisan opposition from lawmakers in the House and Senate, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) yesterday proceeded to begin investing federal retirement savings from the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) — the largest defined contribution plan in the world — in bad-actor Chinese companies. The FRTIB’s new Mutual Fund Window will add 5,000 unvetted mutual funds to the pool of TSP investment options. Shockingly, the FRTIB admitted publicly that it has not conducted any due diligence to evaluate whether these mutual funds include Chinese-owned entities that pose national security risks or fund Chinese companies engaged in human rights violations.
CPA applauded a letter led by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) to the FRTIB asking them to delay the Mutual Fund Window. Senators Rick Scott (R-FL), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Roger Marshall (R-KS), and Rob Portman (R-OH) also signed the letter. Representative Greg Murphy (R-NC) and a bipartisan group of House lawmakers sent an identical letter to the FRTIB.
“[W]e again urge the Board to cancel, or, at minimum, postpone implementation of its Mutual Fund Window initiative until your Board can ensure that no TSP funds are invested in dangerous, non-compliant or opaque Chinese securities, as well as commit to providing TSP account-holders as much transparency as possible about where their hard-earned savings are being invested,” the lawmakers wrote.
“Congress and the Biden administration must intervene immediately to stop the unelected bureaucrats at the FRTIB from investing federal retirement savings in opaque Chinese firms engaged in human rights abuses and a wide range of military-related activities,” said CPA Chairman Zach Mottl. “It is absolutely unacceptable for the Chinese Communist Party to be profiting from the retirement accounts of U.S. government employees and members of the military. The fact that the FRTIB openly admits it has not vetted these 5,000 new mutual funds is an affront not just to TSP participants, but to every American.”
CPA and a diverse coalition of human rights and national security organizations recently launched NoTSPforCCP.org, a website calling on the FRTIB to abandon its unconscionable plan to invest billions of dollars from the retirement assets of federal government employees, active duty servicemembers, veterans, and retired civil servants in companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“The level of fiduciary malfeasance on the part of the TSP Board with regard to high-risk Chinese corporate ‘bad actors’ littering their new Mutual Fund Window initiative is quite breathtaking — no disclosure, no diligence or screening, no corporate governance and no compliance with federal securities laws,” stated Roger W. Robinson, former Chairman of the Congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
While choices in retirement investments are crucial, the FRTIB’s lack of transparency, oversight, and cavalier statements regarding the TSP has alarmed numerous members of Congress and a bipartisan coalition that include human rights, trade, and national security organizations.
“It is simply incredible to the Uyghur American community that public servants and veterans could be funding companies that make their profits from genocide,” said Elfidar Iltebir, coalition member and President of the Uyghur American Association. “Genocide-complicit companies need to be off-limits for federal retirement dollars,” said fellow coalition member Louisa Greve, and director of global advocacy for the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP).
The FRTIB and the TSP’s fund managers, BlackRock and State Street, despite questions from the public, have refused to ensure entities in the mutual funds are not under U.S. sanctions, are in compliance with U.S. securities laws, and do not fund forced labor. Instead, they have shifted the responsibility onto TSP participants: “We also wanted to make sure that people who were using it have some investing experience.”
Under U.S. law, the FRTIB — not TSP participants, particularly those serving in the U.S. military — is required to conduct proper fiduciary duty to ensure that federal retirement dollars are not being invested in CCP-owned entities.
“The purpose of government is to provide for the common defense. That is not merely our physical defense, but the defense of our financial system as well. The idea that a government agency would allow the retirement funds of the men and women in our military to be invested in Communist China — which has declared a People’s War against the United States — is both morally bankrupt and financially irresponsible,” stated coalition member, Brian T. Kennedy, chairman of The Committee on the Present Danger: China.
The No TSP for the CCP Coalition has a simple request for the FRTIB – uphold its fiduciary responsibilities and halt the Mutual Fund Window until the FRTIB and/or its fund managers have vetted, removed, or have appropriately labeled/flagged concerning funds. As the fiduciaries of the world’s largest defined contribution fund, the onus is on the FRTIB and fund managers to do due diligence and protect American taxpayers and investors, not TSP participants.
Stop the Thrift Savings Plan Board’s “Treacherous Sedition” | Secure Freedom Minute
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. Incredibly, at the stroke of midnight tonight, an obscure federal agency will enable the retirement savings of military men and women, past and present, and their civilian counterparts to be invested in companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
By Frank Gaffney | Secure Freedom Minute | May 30, 2022
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
Incredibly, at the stroke of midnight tonight, an obscure federal agency will enable the retirement savings of military men and women, past and present, and their civilian counterparts to be invested in companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Worse yet, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board is not going to warn the participants in its Thrift Savings Plan that they are making such investments.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, for starters, in the words of one of America’s most storied warriors, Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin, this action is tantamount to “treacherous sedition.” He and five other influential retired military leaders wrote the Board last week declaring, “The government of the United States should be precluding any underwriting of the CCP’s ominous military build-up and human rights abuses, not legitimating and facilitating them.”
If you agree, say so at NoTSPforCCP.org.
This is Frank Gaffney.
By Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin, (U.S. Army, Ret.) | GovCon Wire | MAY 31, 2022
As things stand now, the people who manage our federal retirement funds will mark Memorial Day with an egregious act of betrayal of our men and women in uniform, past and present, and their civilian colleagues. Based on my own experience serving our country, I think what they are doing by surreptitiously arranging for participants in the Thrift Savings Plan unwittingly to invest in companies owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is tantamount to treacherous sedition.
On May 24th, I joined five prominent retired military leaders in warning the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) that, in “our professional judgment…mutual funds with such companies in portfolio must be excluded from the Mutual Fund Window that the Thrift Savings Plan expects to open to
federal retirees [on June 1st].
We observed that:
Under Chinese law, all PRC companies are obliged to assist the Party and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) whenever asked to do so. Worse yet, some of those Chinese corporations listed or traded in our capital markets actually work directly for the PLA. It is completely unacceptable that our servicemen and women, past and present – or, for that matter their civilian counterparts among the federal workforce – might be put in a position where their investments may help acquire weapons intended to kill them.
We called on the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) “to refrain from opening mutual funds to TSP participants’ investments unless and until you have ensured than none of such investments will help enrich, enable or empower the Chinese Communist Party.”
Our bottom line is one that I am convinced the vast majority of Thrift Savings Plan participants – if not, as I would hope, every one of them – would strongly endorse: “The government of the United States should be precluding any underwriting of the CCP’s ominous military build-up and human rights abuses, not legitimating and facilitating them.”
This is not the first time the FRTIB and its lead fund-manager, Larry Fink’s BlackRock, have tried to help the Chinese Communists to gain access to our federal employees’ retirement savings. They attempted in 2020 a relatively above-board effort to the same end by switching the only option for international TSP investing to an index fund whose portfolio was substantially made up of CCP corporations. To his credit, President Trump personally intervened to block that gambit.
So, now the TSP fund managers have stealthily conjured up a far less transparent scheme, whereby participants are invited to put up to 25% of their retirement investments in one or more of perhaps as many as 5,000 mutual funds. While the FRTIB will not reveal which of such mutual funds it is offering – and,
thereby, at least implicitly legitimizing and endorsing as prudent investments, it is widely expected that many will have problematic Chinese companies in portfolio. Yet, the TSP managers have said that they will not be making transparent the funds that include such companies and which ones.
Apart from the fiduciary irresponsibility of such an arrangement, there’s another factor that should concern every TSP participant still working in a sensitive position with or for the federal government: Professional harm could be done to government employees with security clearances if they wind up having what would rightly be deemed to be, at a minimum, a conflict of interest by dint of their investments in what has emerged as our greatest enemy of all time.
For these reasons, I urge Thrift Savings participants and other patriotic Americans to take a stand at once and express righteous indignation about the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board’s insidious, and potentially dangerous, help to the Chinese Communist Party. You can do so quickly and easily with your own elected representatives and with the FRTIB Board at www.NoTSPforCCP.org.
Please, do it today.
The Committee on the Present Danger: China is pleased, as part of its weekly series of webinars on the CCP’s “unrestricted warfare” against this country and how it can be countered, to present a conversation with three members of the Expert Panel: its Co-Chairman, Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Dr. Stephen Bryen, a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense; Seth Cropsey, former Under Secretary of the Navy and President of the Yorktown Institute; and former Foreign Service Officer and retired Marine Colonel Grant Newsham, who has long served and worked in the Western Pacific and helped Taiwan improve its military. They will discuss highlights of the thirty-four Panel Findings and Recommendations outlining practical steps that must urgently be taken to deter CCP aggression and preserve regional peace.
Paging the GOP: Stop the Surrender of our Sovereignty | Secure Freedom Minute
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. Weeks before the Chinese Communist Party unleashed the Covid-19 pandemic, its representatives participated in “Event 201,” a table-top exercise organized by, among others, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Its stated purpose was to see how a coronavirus pandemic could be used to strengthen world government.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
Weeks before the Chinese Communist Party unleashed the Covid-19 pandemic, its representatives participated in “Event 201,” a table-top exercise organized by, among others, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Its stated purpose was to see how a coronavirus pandemic could be used to strengthen world government.
A senior Biden administration official named Loyce Pace happens to be a graduate of the Bloomberg School. She is also the author of 13 amendments that would transform the head of the World Health Organization into the global arbiter of what constitutes public health emergencies and how they will be addressed. Not our government, but CCP-shill Tedros Ghebreyesus.
Former Representative Michele Bachmann says we need Republicans in Congress to conduct the equivalent of a general strike – no quorums, no legislation – until Ms. Pace’s appalling surrender of our national sovereignty is formally repudiated.
Do it now.
This is Frank Gaffney.
For Immediate Release
May 11, 2022
CONTACTS:
Hamilton Strategies, [email protected],
Beth Harrison, 610.584.1096, ext. 105,
or Deborah Hamilton, ext. 102.
Individuals responsible for managing the retirement funds of U.S. government employees – both civilian and military, past and present – are determined to invest billions of their savings in companies owned or controlled by our country’s mortal enemy: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The principal fund manager for the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), BlackRock’s Larry Fink, and its oversight panel, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB), were told not to do that by President Trump in 2020. And both he and his successor, President Biden, issued Executive Orders designed to preclude U.S. investments in such companies that pose a threat to our national security and/or enable the CCP’s human rights abuses. Incredibly, the impending opening of a Mutual Fund Window at TSP would open the way to violation of all those presidential directives.
A Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC) webinar on Thursday, 12 May from 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET will address the extreme inadvisability of such an initiative and the larger problem of U.S. investors more generally underwriting the CCP’s “unrestricted warfare” aimed at destroying America. The webinar will feature remarks by Frank Gaffney (moderator), Roger Robinson, Kyle Bass, and LTG William “Jerry” Boykin, US Army (Ret.) (Invited).
Attendees are encouraged to send a letter to President Biden and their members of Congress to demand, “No T.S.P. for C.C.P.”
MODERATOR
PANELISTS
WHAT: “No TSP for CCP” webinar
WHEN: Thursday, May 12, 2022, 1-2 p.m. ET
HOW: Register for the webinar here.
CONTACTS:
Hamilton Strategies, [email protected], Beth Harrison, 610.584.1096, ext. 105, or Deborah Hamilton, ext. 102.
Individuals responsible for managing the retirement funds of U.S. government employees – both civilian and military, past and present – are determined to invest billions of their savings in companies owned or controlled by our country’s mortal enemy: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The principal fund manager for the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), BlackRock’s Larry Fink, and its oversight panel, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB), were told not to do that by President Trump in 2020. And both he and his successor issued Executive Orders designed to preclude U.S. investments in such companies that pose a threat to our national security and/or enable the CCP’s human rights abuses. Incredibly, the impending opening of a Mutual Fund Window at TSP would open the way to violation of all those presidential directives.
A Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC) webinar on Thursday, 12 May from 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET will address the extreme inadvisability of such an initiative and the larger problem of U.S. investors more generally underwriting the CCP’s “unrestricted warfare” aimed at destroying America.
With Frank Gaffney, Roger Robinson, Kyle Bass, Joel Caplan, and LTG. Jerry Boykin.
