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November 8, 2024 - 1:15pm
A political consultant with a long history of providing corporate interests and foreign agents with Government favours is set to become the most powerful figure in the White House.
In his first major personnel decision since Tuesday’s election victory, Donald Trump announced yesterday that Susie Wiles will serve as his chief of staff. Wiles is a powerful operator who has spent a career in Republican establishment politics, from stints with Rep. Jack Kemp to the Bush-Quayle campaign and Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid. More recently, along with Chris LaCivita, she was the behind-the-scenes manager of Trump’s successful campaign, making her appointment an expected choice.
Yet it is her work beyond the campaign trail that may bring pause to supporters hoping the President-elect will deliver on his America First promises. This is because Wiles is the co-chair of Mercury Public Affairs, one of the largest lobbying firms in the US. The company counts many clients which are at odds with various aspects of the Trump agenda. Over the last year, its roster has included Kraft Heinz and Nestlé, makers of ultra-processed junk foods that will be at odds with the promised “Make America Healthy Again” reforms of public health agencies. According to forms filed with Congress, Wiles is directly registered as a lobbyist for tobacco firm Swisher International on matters related to “FDA regulations”.
The client list includes AT&T, Airbnb, eBay, Archer Daniels Midland, and many other corporate giants. However, it may be her company’s extensive foreign lobbying that will raise the most eyebrows.
Mercury currently represents the state of Qatar, Libya’s national oil company, and three major Chinese corporations: JinkoSolar, Hikvision USA, and Alibaba. The Chinese firms have contended with American tariffs and other restrictions. Hikvision in particular has faced enhanced sanctions from the Biden administration over allegations that the company’s surveillance cameras are used for human rights abuses and military purposes.
Mercury lobbyists, ethics filings show, have worked this year on Hikvision to contact the State Department and the Treasury Department, presumably on lifting the restrictions. There are thousands of lobbyists in Washington, but a firm with a direct line to the president and a history of shaping foreign policy — in exchange for cash — on China is far from the norm.
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SubscribeYa. Not a good look at all. Ugh.
Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss!
If this is not the classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is. After 4 years of suppressed Hunter Biden scams around the globe and money laundering, we have this before it even happens? Besides, isn’t seeking power and influence the main reason why people become involved in politics in the first place? It’s why it attracts only a certain type of person. Most honest folks wouldn’t last 8 hours in Washington.
I must have missed Fang’s article on the Clinton Foundation’s “charitable” endeavors.
Hey this is Lee Fang. You did miss it, maybe you didn’t look before you commented. I was the first to break many of the major Clinton Foundation foreign influence and corporate influence stories, including efforts by Morocco to use donations to the charity to curry influence.
I’ve also reported extensively about Chinese influence in American politics on both major political parties. I was the first to report Hunter Biden’s investments in a Chinese surveillance company and also broke the story of a Chinese billionaire buying the home of Obama’s ambassador to China and illegally funneling donations into a major SuperPAC. I am nonpartisan — I hold everyone accountable.
https://theintercept.com/2015/04/22/inside-morocco-clinton-influence-campaign/
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/02/hna-group-corruption-scaramucci-trump-jeb-bush-clinton-guo-wengui/
https://theintercept.com/2019/05/03/biden-son-china-business/
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/03/chinese-couple-million-dollar-donation-jeb-bush-super-pac/
a former Trump campaign staffer, who asked not to be named, told me.
What on earth does this mean? It should be clear by now that we’re sick and tired of this sort of comment. A campaign staffer. What does that mean? What does “former” mean, 2016, 2020, 2024 and why are they former? How close were they to decision making? Are they reliable or a total idiot. Do they have an axe to grind? Do they even exist?
Lee Fang is a highly respected independent journalist. This is what journalism does, use anonymous sources. Based on the credibility of the journalist, we can determine whether or not the sources are good. You seem very uninformed about how this works.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the source was Steve Bannon or Peter Navarro, or possibly even Lighthizer.
I’m well aware of anonymous sources and how they works, Your cheap shot is exactly that. The point is that the source was used to finish the piece and reflect what the writer was getting at, thereby giving his piece more credibility. It’s a pretty meaningless statement anyway. The interesting thing is that the anonymous quote has allowed you to fill in the gap with figures higher up in the food chain, thereby giving the quote more importance, when in fact it’s a statement with the inside knowledge of the doorman.
Are you the first person to put this information into the public domain? It is damned important and not what I would have expected from Trump.
No he’s not the first person to put this story into the public domain. There’s very little here to be concerned about. Wiles has done nothing illegal. There is no “story” in the story.
No surprise here. Just the beginning of what we can expect from the Democrats and all the hyenas in their camp. Obviously they are incapable of taking a good look at themselves, even though they’ve received a crushing and ignoble defeat. It’s not so much that they won’t look in the mirror as that they just don’t know how to do it. I’m sure we all know of someone like this. They’re actually crippled people who live with some patched-up idea of themselves to compensate for something gone wrong in their lives and they destroy everything around them in the process.
So governments shouldn’t be held to account by the press when hypocrisy or conflicts of interest occur? Or should it only happen when your preferred side aren’t in power?
So governments shouldn’t be held to account by the press when hypocrisy or conflicts of interest occur?
Your argument supposes that clients of a business enjoy perpetual devotion by owners of the business. Lobbying is a business, as is the practice of law. I suggest wait for acts, rather than support smears.
I don’t believe pointing out a potential conflict of interest in a woman just given a powerful government position is a smear personally. You’d be screaming blue murder if the opposition had something similar
Of course it’s a smear when it’s only a “potential” conflict. Are we now to be judged on what might happen in the future?
I take it you missed this part of the article: “John Kelly, a former Marine Corps. General, was an establishment figure who also spun through the revolving door and served on boards of several defence contractors. He later turned on Trump, accusing him of being a fascist who would govern as a dictator.”
Corrupt lobbyists and other political sellouts always return to the honeypot after leaving gov’t positions: see Scaramucci, Pence, etc. This woman sounds like a Republican version of the Podesta brothers.
If you mean having come from the corporate sector and having served her time as Chief of Staff she will then return to the corporate sector then yes you’re correct. But what’s unusual about that? From where do you think the government should recruit a Cabinet? Where would it find the people with the skills and experience?
You do have a point. Unfortunately all things media are now viewed with total distrust. We simply cannot trust what we read. Therefore we challenge everything. Stories will have to drop words like “presumably” for instance when trying to assert something they don’t seem to be able to prove, or stop including reasonably benign facts to give the piece more substance, as is done here with Nestle and Heinz. Just give us the facts then we’ll form our opinion, We don’t need others to do it.
NOW ties to China are an issue? Seriously? And how typical, the apocalyptic warning comes from an anonymous source. Perhaps this is all accurate but it also repeats the pattern that has led people to discount most media.
I think the media will continue to make it worse for themselves. It’s going to take a lot of work on the part of the media to turn Trump’s voters against him and in the process they’ll damage their reputation even more, all the while blaming Trump for their own demise.
Forget the anonymous source, do you not find her history extremely disturbing? And yes, most Trump supporters will consider her lengthy history of CCP company-lobbying to be an issue.
Having read the references and other stories I do not find her history “extremely disturbing”. Her history is very clear and available to the public. Nothing has been concealed. There is nothing illegal with companies lobbying the government. The company she is associated with operates legally as a consultancy to Chinese business and government. Wiles obviously has abilities that suit her new position. There may be moral considerations to be taken into account, but certainly not legal issues. Let’s see what eventuates before jumping to conclusions.
Oh what webs we weave as we plan to deceive
Ah but such are the ways of so called US Democracy now totally in the grip of lobbyists mainly from the Defense and Fossil Fuel Industries
A voting ballot paper in America is now only fit for hanging from your toilet roll holder
Something I can see happening, and it’ll happen here in comments; most people who voted for Trump, more than likely, despise the Democrats and the media for their lies their deceptions and their policies. They won’t forget that in a long time. Because of that they’ll give Trump a lot of rope. They’ll ignore a lot of what the media might say about him, his cabinet and policies. The more the media try to pile in on the more his voters will ignore it. This is a total commitment both for Trump and against the left, which they associate with the Democrats.