In February, The Justice Department announced that it would pull the plug on the Trump-era initiative aimed at cracking down on China’s economic espionage following a year of objection from some fellow Democrats, hundreds of University professors, and Left-wing activists, as well as the Chinese Communist Party itself.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, headed the letter pushing back on this decision, with signatories also including fellow GOP Sens. Mike Lee, Bill Cassidy, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, James Lankford, Ron Johnson, and Cynthia Lummis.
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“Despite this critical moment and the high stakes, DOJ chose to disband its China Initiative in favor of a vague ‘Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats’ that appears to equate the unique and extensive threats from the CCP with those of other nation-state threats,” the Republicans told Garland, adding, “We urge DOJ to formally recognize and reprioritize the threat presented by the CCP to U.S. national security, and ask that you reconsider your decision to disband the China Initiative.”
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Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, who runs the DOJ’s National Security Division, announced in February the decision to end the China Initiative, contending that the effort could have been perceived as racist, even though he acknowledged that China poses an “evolving, significant threat.” Republicans retorted, “The wholesale abandonment of a national security initiative because of unproven allegations of racial profiling should not happen.”
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Rubio is delivering a speech at the Heritage Foundation this Tuesday regarding “Putin’s War and the Threat from Communist China.” His office told the Washington Examiner that he “is expected to make criticism of the [China Initiative] decision a focal point.”
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“Combatting the CCP threat should not be confused with bias toward Chinese people, much less Americans of Chinese descent. In reality, the CCP represents neither of these groups of people,” the GOP letter reads. “Not only does the CCP not represent the Chinese people, but the greatest victims of the CCP’s totalitarian model of governance are the Chinese people themselves. The DOJ should continue to take all appropriate steps to dispel any narratives, often perpetuated by the CCP itself, that countering real security threats posed by the CCP implicates Asian Americans.”
The DOJ’s fresh new strategy includes a more dispersed focus on Russia, Iran, and North Korea, along with China.