Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) often lectures his Senate colleagues on the urgency of continuing to fund Ukraine’s war against Russia, but there’s an issue more urgent to the American people he has not adequately addressed, according to Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer’s new book Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans.
In Blood Money, Schweizer reveals China’s “Disintegration Warfare” plans to kill Americans and sow social chaos, detailing shocking evidence that China is intentionally and systematically exporting deadly fentanyl into the United States.
Despite that war raging in communities across America and claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, Schweizer writes that McConnell has never made China’s role supplying fentanyl a priority.
McConnell’s family, through his wife Elaine Chao’s father-in-law, has strong financial ties with the Chinese government, Schweizer explains. He says further that McConnell would put his family’s finances at risk by holding China’s leaders to account for what they’ve done to the American people. He writes:
The Chao family runs an international shipping business that is heavily dependent on the good graces of the Chinese government. The family businesses, Foremost Group and its subsidiaries, do considerable work with some of the companies named in this book, including Hutchison Port Holdings, which operates ports around the world and as we’ve shown, has been the subject of concern for decades about smuggling activities.
Hutchison enjoys a close working relationship with the Chinese government and military while conducting significant business with the Chao family businesses, Schweizer documents in his book. He also reveals that the company has deep ties with Chinese organized crime. And Hutchison has been flagged by U.S. officials for problems with smuggling weapons and other prohibited items, according to U.S. government reports he cites.
Elaine Chao (center) is flanked by her father (left) and her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, (right) during her confirmation hearing to be the U.S. Secretary of Transportation on January 11, 2017, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The December 2017 signing ceremony between the Chao family’s Foremost Group and the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC)
In Mexico, Hutchison controls and operates the international terminals in Manzanillo and Puerto de Lazaro Cardenas. U.S. officials believe 90 percent of fentanyl precursors arriving in Mexico from China come through Manzanillo alone, Schweizer writes. And the fentanyl produced there ends up in American communities.
A member of the Mexican Navy checks suspicious shipments for possible drugs at the pre-inspection area of the SSA precinct for detection of illicit substances in Manzanillo, Colima state, Mexico, on July 19, 2023. (ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images)
“The family’s dependence on Beijing’s favor for the operation of their business is real,” Schweizer says. “Were Senator McConnell to take action that angered the Chinese leadership, they could effectively destroy the Chao family business overnight.”
In 2019, when the opioid crisis was already responsible for tens of thousands of deaths – including in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky, which was particularly hard hit – the Washington Post asked the Republican leader what he had done to deal with the fentanyl crisis. According to Blood Money, “McConnell’s office told the paper that he had ‘taken meaningful steps to address the opioid crisis, including holding roundtables in his home state.’ He had also ‘led an effort in 2015 and again in 2018 to address opioid addiction in pregnant women.’”
On Wednesday, McConnell announced that he will step down from his leadership position in the Senate later this year.
Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans is available now in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.
