Peter Schweizer: Washington Corrupt Practices Act Needed to Drain the Swamp
Breitbart.com | By Robert Kraychik
Legislation mandating disclosure of financial ties between immediate family members of elected government officials and foreign governments — provisionally titled the Washington Corrupt Practices Act — would help combat foreign-procured political influence and corruption within America, determined Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, senior contributor at Breitbart News, and author of Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.
Schweizer elaborated on his Wednesday-published New York Times opinion editorial in a same-day interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host and Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) financial relationship with the Chinese state is illustrative of the status quo of foreign business relationships between politicians and foreign governments evading disclosure requirements, explained Schweizer.
The family of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is McConnell’s wife, owns a seafaring shipping business, noted Schwiezer. “They had it even before Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao were married, but in 1993 … the Chinese government basically struck a deal with the Chao family, where they said, ‘We will finance the construction of your cargo ships. We will provide crews for your cargo ships, and state-owned enterprises in China will give you lots of contracts to ship our goods around Asia.’”
Schweizer continued, “And what you’ve seen as that relationship has budded, is basically that Mitch McConnell has become a lot less critical of the Chinese government, and this is essentially what the Chinese are playing at. They’ve done it in Australia. They’ve done it in New Zealand [and] other parts of Asia. They are quite confident that the way to deal with adversarial countries or countries that are resistant to their policies is essentially [is to] try to buy off the political class, and they’ve had some success in doing that, and they’re doing that in the United States today.”