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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

EXCLUSIVE: US Oil Sales to China Could Be ‘Unlawful Activity,’ GOP Lawmakers Tell Biden

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Categories: ASCF News Energy Independence

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/exclusive-us-oil-sales-to-china-could-be-unlawful-activity-gop-lawmakers-tell-biden_4623141.html

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) listens during a hearing at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, on June 21, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Republican lawmakers are pressing President Joe Biden to make clear whether he had a role in auctioning off oil from U.S. emergency reserves to a Chinese entity that has been previously linked to his younger son.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) on July 26 led a letter flagging the sale of U.S. strategic oil reserves worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Chinese state-owned Unipec over concerns that such transactions could stand to benefit the president’s son Hunter Biden.

If true, this would mark an “unlawful activity,” potentially posing an “unethical and potentially illegal abuse of the powers of the office of the President of the United States,” the lawmaker said in the letter shared with The Epoch Times.

Unipec is the U.S. subsidiary of Chinese state-run oil giant Sinopec. Since last September, Unipec has won contracts for nearly 6 million barrels of reserve oil, with a total worth of about $464 million, The Epoch Times has reported.

‘If Hunter Biden Were Instead Hunter Trump’
BHR Partners, a Chinese private equity firm co-founded by Hunter Biden, has made investments in Sinopec. While Hunter’s lawyer last November said that the younger Biden has divested his 10 percent stake in BHR, the Chinese firm’s 2021 annual report released in June still listed Hunter as a shareholder, according to Chinese financial records.

“Sadly, the allegations about Hunter’s self-profiting did not come as a surprise to many of us as we have grown to expect seeing reports of nepotism within this administration,” Norman wrote, citing reports of Biden family members allegedly profiting off official positions Biden has held since he was the senator for Delaware. These include Hunter traveling on Air Force Two to China, when his father was vice president, to broker a multimillion-dollar business deal with Chinese corporations,” the lawmaker wrote.

“If the allegations before us now are true, the American people deserve to know whether or not their President directly participated and benefited from any and all unethical actions,” wrote Norman in the letter.

The lawmaker described the allegations regarding the oil sale as “severely unsettling, and if true, may even constitute an impeachable offense under the ‘bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors’ clause of Article 2 of the Constitution.’”

“If Hunter Biden were instead Hunter Trump, every media outlet across this nation would be screaming non-stop about his shady dealings,” Norman told The Epoch Times.

“It’s bad enough that the President’s policies have caused energy prices to skyrocket to the point where he felt compelled to release our emergency strategic reserves to artificially lower prices. The fact that his son stands to profit financially from this should outrage every American.”

National Security Concerns
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world’s largest oil reserve that intends to alleviate oil shortages in the United States in times of wars or natural disasters.

A third of the Unipec purchase, or 1.9 million barrels total, came after Biden in March ordered the largest oil release in the reserve’s history. The measure will see the oil stock shrink by a third by this fall, which the president has described as necessary to “help American families who are paying more out of pocket” due to “Putin’s price hike at the pump.”

Selling oil to China is helping an adversary while compromising America’s national security, Norman said.

“The oil within the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was intended for the American people, not for adversarial countries, and certainly not to make the Biden Family richer at a time when our citizens are paying almost $5.00 a gallon for gasoline and $6.00 for diesel,” he wrote in the letter.

Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, on July 22 dismissed Republican criticisms of the sale as “ridiculous and false.”

He told Fox News that the Department of Energy is required by law to sell the oil supply to the highest bidder, “regardless of whether that bidder is a foreign company,” and that “the president had no personal involvement in this process whatsoever.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comments over the allegations.

Norman, in the letter, requested a list of documents, including Treasury Department records on all corporate entities linked to Hunter, financial reports stating whether or not Hunter is still bound to BHR, and a signed affidavit from Hunter promising not to benefit from the oil sales, as well as communications between the president and Hunter since the president took office relating to China, oil, Sinopec, Unipec, BHR, and Hunter’s overseas business transactions.

Norman, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, was joined by 11 other House Republicans, including Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Fred Keller (R-Pa.), William Timmons (R-S.C.), Randy Weber (R-Texas), Pat Fallon (R-Texas), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), and Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.).

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