Democrats, in Southern California and nationally, are rallying around San Gabriel Valley-area Rep. Judy Chu, who is fiercely pushing back after a GOP congressman suggested she was disloyal to the nation after reports in conservative media that she and the longtime CEO of a Pasadena-based bank have ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The accusations, denied as racist and unfounded by Chu in a series of statements over the last two weeks, sparked among the fiercest pushback after Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas appeared on Fox News on Wednesday, saying that Chu “should be looked into” by the FBI following reports in the conservative outlet the Daily Caller of her ties to Dominic Ng, the CEO of San Gabriel Valley-based East West Bank, and that she was “honorary president” for the All American Chinese Youth Federation (AACYF), a group whose other leaders are said to have belonged to an alleged Chinese intelligence service.
“I think that everyone that’s standing up for the Chinese Communist Party should be looked into, yes,” Gooden answered to a question from host Jesse Waters.
“I think Judy needs to be called out,” he said, adding that he questioned “her either loyalty or competence. If she doesn’t realize what’s going on then she’s totally out of touch with one of her core constituencies.”
Gooden suggested that Chu should no longer have access to intelligence briefings.
The comments, which echoed an earlier letter penned by Gooden and five other Republicans to the FBI demanding an investigation into Ng’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party, drew immediate ire from Democrats and Chu herself as the allegations questioning her loyalty, and that of Ng’s, echoed over cable news and print in recent days.
Chu immediately pushed back, telling the Washington Post after Gooden’s Fox spot that Gooden’s comments questioning her loyalty to the U.S. were “absolutely outrageous,” based on “false information spread by an extreme, right-wing website. Furthermore, it is racist. I very much doubt that he would be spreading these lies were I not of Chinese American descent.”
In recent days, irate Democrats have rushed to support Chu, who rose from a school board member at the Garvey School District in Rosemead to the Monterey Park City Council to ultimately the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress in 2009.
On Friday, Irvine state Sen. Dave Min condemned Gooden’s comments, adding that “throughout her career in public service, Congresswoman Chu has served honorably and the racist, xenophobic, anti-Asian hate directed toward her by a fellow member of Congress is disgusting and appalling.”
House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the comments “slanderous,” calling the questioning of Chu’s loyalty to the nation “dangerous, unconscionable and xenophobic.”
Jeffries called Gooden’s comments are “dangerous, unconscionable and xenophobic,” according to Axios. “Congressman Gooden appears to sympathize with violent insurrectionists and spreads big lies to the American people, having voted not to certify the election of President Joe Biden. Look in the mirror, Lance. You have zero credibility,” Jeffries said.
The Washington Post noted that the Daily Caller has also alleged that Chu has said she wished for Taiwan and China “to become one family” at a 2019 dinner for an organization against Taiwan’s independence. But Chu reiterated to the Post and in an earlier statement that she had no affiliation with such a group.
“I have been accused of serving as the honorary president of an organization … with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. I am not and have never been a member of this group, and I never gave my permission to be listed as the ‘honorary president’ for it or any other organization like it,’” she said in a Feb. 14 statement.
Gooden’s accusations on Fox News were actually a step beyond those formalized in the Feb. 15 letter authored by Gooden and the five other Republicans, demanding that FBI Director Christopher Wray investigate Ng. President Joe Biden appointed Ng to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Business Advisory Council last April.
In the role, according to the U.S. State Department, Ng and his counterparts advise APEC leaders on issues impacting economic growth in the Asian-Pacific region. For decades, APEC itself has served as a high-profile economic platform for the United States to engage its regional partners on structural issues “to advance a fair, open, sustainable and inclusive economic and trade architecture,” according to the State Department.
But the House members essentially echoed allegations published on the conservative news site that Ng served in leadership roles in two Chinese intelligence front groups, and said that “political actors like Ng use such roles to try to gain influence in sensitive American institutions to advocate for the interests of China,” a U.S. adversary.
In the letter, Gooden and his co-authors pointed to Chu’s support of Ng — prior to his appointment to APEC — for U.S. secretary of commerce, and Chu’s membership as “honorary president” for the All America Chinese Youth Federation, a communist front group, they alleged, as suggestive of her ties to Ng and to China.
What’s at stake, they said, is that the appointment of Ng was an example of a lack of scrutiny on appointees, and demanded that the Biden Administration take steps to not let it happen again.
“If the Biden Administration does not take the CCP seriously, our leaders are risking an endless slew of national security breaches,” they wrote to Wray.
For his part, according to the Washington Post, the bank Ng runs said in a statement Thursday that he was never an active member of either of the groups cited by the GOP letter and by the Daily Caller.
Ng, the top executive of East-West since 1991, is known for building the bank founded in Los Angeles and headquartered in Pasadena from a small savings and loan institution to a giant among regional banks, with more than $64 billion in assets, more than 3,000 employees and 600,000 customers globally.
His resume includes previous board service on the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, and he was named one of Forbes’ 25 most notable Chinese Americans, and the Los Angeles Business Journal’s Business Person of the Year, among other things.
Chu, among others, defended Ng.
“We are extremely disturbed and outraged — but not surprised — that some of our Republican colleagues in Congress would undermine his candidacy and even question his loyalty to the United States based entirely on loose claims of association trafficked on extreme-right outlets with extensive histories of spreading misinformation,” Chu said in a joint statement along with Ted Lieu, D- Torrance; Grace Meng, D-New York; and Mark Takano, D-Riverside, all leaders of the Asian Pacific American Caucus.
“No Chinese Americans — indeed no Americans — should face suspicions of disloyalty or treason based on their ethnicity, nation of origin, or that of their family members,” the statement added, “That kind of profiling is beneath us all, particularly those entrusted with public office.”
The growing scope episode has arrived amid simmering tension with China in recent weeks, but also deepening division between Republicans and Democrats in D.C., propelled by squabbles over the nation’s relationship with the Asian power.
A Chinese spy balloon that a U.S. fighter jet ultimately shot down on Feb. 4 off the coast of South Carolina amplified tensions. Congressional Republicans and the White House scrapped over the incident, with the GOP pressing for answers about why the balloon was allowed to traverse the continental U.S. before going after it.
Chu agreed the balloon flyover into U.S. air space was a violation of national sovereignty that has hurt relations between the two nations. But what it’s not, she added, was an “excuse to misrepresent and cast aspersions on the loyalties of Americans of Chinese descent like me.”
Source: Orange County Register
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