Company That Bought 55,000 Acres Around Travis AFB Now Suing Landowners for 'Price Gouging'

(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

It is no state secret that between ESG, backroom deals, technology theft, spy balloons, TikTok, fentanyl, and an increasingly aggressive military, the CCP has been engaged in the process of systematically dismantling the United States. Not that we weren’t already doing a bang-up job of that already. Part of this assault has been the purchase of large amounts of land around the U.S. And while it has not been conclusively proven that the company Flannery Associates, LLC, is a front for CCP operation, there is enough smoke from a lawsuit to have Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) looking for the fire.

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American Wire notes that as far back as 2018, Flannery had started purchasing what would amount to 55,000 acres surrounding Travis Air Force Base in Solano County, California. The combined market value of these purchases is around $800 million. That one corporation has the capital to buy that much land in that particular location is unsettling enough and warrants further examination. But in May of this year, Flannery filed a $510 million lawsuit against the sellers. The suit has a mind-numbingly long list of defendants, ranging from LLCs to trusts, families, and individuals, not to mention “John Does 1-50.” It alleges violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act and California’s Cartwright and Unfair Competition Law.

Here are some excerpts from the filing:

The Conspirators have engaged in an illegal price-fixing conspiracy regarding the sale of their properties, and this conspiracy has had – and (unless enjoined) will continue to have – a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

This is a simple case about a group of wealthy landowners who saw an opportunity to conspire, collude, price fix, and illegally overcharge Flannery, a buyer who had approached these landowners on an individual basis to buy their properties in the Jepson Prairie and Montezuma Hills area of Solano County, California. This area hosts several utility-scale commercial wind farms, transmission lines, substations, and other energy infrastructure, as well as numerous environmental conservation and mitigation projects.

If the Conspirators had acted independently, they could have each individually negotiated a sale with Flannery and made tens of millions of dollars in profits.

But the Conspirators wanted to make hundreds of millions. To do so, they formed a secret conspiracy to drive up prices to supracompetitive levels by eliminating the free market competition in the sale of properties that would have otherwise occurred among the Conspirators.

Acting in flagrant disregard of federal and state law, the Conspirators agreed to sell to Flannery only at supracompetitive prices.

Flannery estimates that, to date, the Conspirators and their illegal price-fixing conspiracy have caused damages to Flannery from overpayment for properties from the Conspirators, their co-owners, and third parties of at least $170 million ($170,000,000.00), and that Defendants are therefore jointly and severally liable to pay Flannery treble damages in the amount of at least $510 million ($510,000,000.00). These damages from overpayment for properties continue to increase. In addition, Defendants are jointly and severally liable to pay Flannery treble damages for lost profits.

That is the complaint in a proverbial nutshell. The complaint goes on to outline specific instances and elements of the issue, and you can read it in full here. Flannery claims that it has text messages and emails that support its allegations.

Related: Will China Become the Last Refuge of Western Culture?

Representative Garamendi contends that the suit does not pass the smell test. He told News Nation:

It is a suit designed to force the farmers to lawyer up, spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyering and maybe at the end of the day, bankrupt themselves. In fact, that has happened to at least one family that I know of and I’ve heard rumors that another family simply said we can’t afford the lawyers…The fact they chose to buy all three sides of the Travis Air Force Base raises immediate questions about national security. So, is this Chinese money? We don’t know, but we do know that the Chinese money was being used in North Dakota and we have a very deep suspicion, given the amount of money, given the lack of attention to values, that they simply want to acquire all of this land.

As I write this, Jack Smith is delivering his statement on the latest Trump indictment. He plays the part of being steely-eyed and resolved and has all but broken into tears in invoking “January 6.” But Trump has become low-hanging fruit. And at this point, it is all too obvious that the administration and its allies are dedicated to removing Trump as a presidential candidate for 2024. No one but the MSM and the truly indoctrinated believe this is about justice anymore. And anyone with two working brain cells can see that the constant drumbeat of “Trump, Trump, Trump” is meant to distract the public from the revelations about the current first family. Only the fully indoctrinated glue-sniffers and paste-eaters on the Left believe anything else. Even the bought-and-paid-for Jack Smith knows it. He doesn’t care — but he knows it. He can sell his soul if he wants. He won’t get as much as Garland did for his, but that’s his problem.

But if Mr. Garamendi is truly concerned about these members of his district, then it is time for him to take action. The people of Solano County and, for that matter, the nation deserve to know who is involved in Flannery Associates, LLC, both foreign and domestic. And given the connections that the Biden family has to China, Mr. Garamendi should consider crossing the aisle to join his GOP colleagues in demanding answers. Compared to what has happened under the current administration, any alleged wrongdoings by the previous one are practically schoolboy pranks.

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