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President Donald Trump is moving quickly to block a federal pension fund board reportedly staffed by Obama appointees from funneling federal employees’ pension funds into Chinese equities linked to the Communist Party of China’s military.
“A source who discussed the matter directly with President Trump described him as incredulous over the looming prospect of U.S. service members seeing their paychecks deducted for the purpose of funding the Chinese military,” Sinclair’s James Rosen has confirmed.
Rosen is the former Fox News journalist who was illegally spied upon by the Obama administration.
Learn more below:
EXCLUSIVE: @POTUS is moving swiftly to block the federal employees’ pension fund @tsp4gov from a planned expansion of its investments into Chinese equities believed to be tied to China’s military and intelligence apparatus. pic.twitter.com/1npsjbOkOK
— James Rosen (@JamesRosenTV) April 30, 2020
Known as the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), the fund contains $700 billion in pensions that have been collected from both taxpayers and an estimated 5.5 federal employees ranging from members of Congress to members of the U.S. military.
Filings show that the fund’s governing body, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, issued a ruling last November calling for a portion of the fund’s money to be shifted to Chinese equities.
“That will literally send tens of billions of dollars onto the Chinese stock exchange and help companies that are directly involved in the Chinese defense industry — and in espionage,” Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, a Republican, said to Rosen.
Waltz is a National Guardsman and the first Green Beret elected to Congress. Last week he introduced legislation that would bar the fund “from investing in foreign markets whose firms do not submit to audits by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a private-sector non-profit organization created by Congress to help regulate the accounting practices of publicly held firms,” according to Rosen.
He told Rosen that he’s hoping the president takes the initiative and resolves the issue himself by issuing an executive order.
“I’m looking for an executive order,” he said. “I’ll leave it to the White House to work through the exact tactics, but they understand the urgency… It needs to happen in the coming weeks.”
Speaking on Fox News early Thursday morning, Waltz added that if the transfer in funds is allowed to proceed, the money will be used to “fund companies that are building ships, planes, conducting espionage, oppressing the Chinese people.”
And this won’t just affect the pensioners — it’ll affect American taxpayers.
“There’s a taxpayer-funded match to those contributions as well,” Waltz explained.
“The problem is these board members, most of them are Obama-era appointees and they’re Senate confirmed, so we need to stop this in the short-term so we can get those people changed out,” he continued.
“But a lot of these folks think like apparently Vice President Joe Biden does, that the rise of China is a peaceful and a good thing. The last thing I want to see is military members’ retirement going to fund the adversary they may have to confront someday.”
Listen below via FNC’s “America’s Newsroom” (disable your adblocker if the video doesn’t appear):
What he said was accurate.
All five members of the board are reportedly Obama-era officials who were appointed to their posts by then-President Barack Hussein Obama.
“The terms for each of the members all lapsed between 2015 and 2018. Under current law, however, board members are permitted to serve past the ends of their terms until the president nominates, and the Senate confirms, their successors,” Rosen notes.
The president has thus far failed to nominate any replacements. Meanwhile, a TSP spokesperson confirmed with Rosen that FRTIB board members have already begun filing the paperwork needed to implement their November order.
The last thing our military should be investing their retirement plans on is #China’s Communist regime.
We must stop this horrible decision and remove and replace ALL the board members who approved it! https://t.co/z8dOVP5nQZ
— Rep. Michael Waltz (@RepMichaelWaltz) April 30, 2020
“I’m a free market, pro-growth guy all day long — but not when it comes at the expense of national security,” Waltz added in a statement to Rosen.
“The last thing we should have is our military members, who are out on the front line, having deductions from their paycheck to go to a 401k plan that then funds their very adversary. I mean, it’s just — it’s just mind-boggling.”
The FRTIB appears to disagree. In a statement, the board’s chair, Michael Kennedy, defended the impending transfer of funds into Communist hands.
“The Board’s primary focus is providing options to allow our participants to save for a secure retirement,” he said. “My fellow Board Members and I serve as fiduciaries who are legally obligated to act ‘solely in the interest of the [TSP] participants and beneficiaries.'”
All this comes as the Trump administration moves to ramp up punishment against China for the role it played in allowing the coronavirus to spread across the globe.
“Senior U.S. officials are beginning to explore proposals for punishing or demanding financial compensation from China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic,” The Washington Post confirmed Thursday.
“President Trump has fumed to aides and others in recent days about China, blaming the country for withholding information about the virus, and has discussed enacting dramatic measures that would probably lead to retaliation by Beijing.”
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