A total of 20 former and current elected Republicans are named in Peter Schweizer’s new bestseller Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win as having business dealings and political ties to the United States’ largest adversary, China.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his wife, former President Trump’s Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, “enjoy some of the deepest and most abiding ties to Beijing- linked entities of anyone in Washington, D.C.,” Schweizer writes.
Those ties mostly stem from Chao’s fathers’ massive shipping business, the Foremost Group, which has built the family’s fortune by sharing a close financial relationship with China-owned companies like the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC).
After McConnell visited Beijing, China in 1993, alongside Chao, the Foremost Group received 10 mammoth ships from China-owned companies between 2001 to 2011.
“There can be little doubt that the McConnell-Chao family business fortunes could be disrupted overnight if Beijing looked with too much disfavor at the policy positions he takes toward China,” Schweizer notes.
[…]
