When Joe Biden rode off into the sunset at the end of his two terms as vice president, he needed something to occupy his time when he wasn’t playing on the Delaware beach. So he backed the formation of the Joe Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Known now as the Penn Biden Center, it’s not exactly clear what the center does or is supposed to do.
The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement hired Biden as an “honorary professor” from 2017-2019. He taught no classes, but his connection to the think tank certainly opened the spigot of donations to the university from one interested party: China.
The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) claims the college received $54.6 million in donations from China between 2014 through June 2019, including $23.1 million in 2016. “The Penn Biden Center is a dark money, revolving door nightmare where foreign competitors like China donated millions of dollars to the university so that they could have access to future high-ranking officials,” said Tom Anderson, director of the Government Integrity Project at the Virginia-based National Legal and Policy Center.
“The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity,” a spokesman for the University of Pennsylvania, Stephen MacCarthy, told the New York Post. “In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center. Since its inception in 2017, there have been three unsolicited gifts (from two donors) which combined total [sic] $1,100. Both donors are Americans. One hundred percent of the budget for the Penn Biden Center comes from university funds.”
Yes, but what about “gifts” to the University? When you’re dealing with $54 million, are we really to believe that the school didn’t receive any suggestions on where that money should go?
“MacCarthy was very careful to say Penn ‘never solicited any gifts’ to Penn Biden Center,” NLPC counsel Paul Kamenar said. “It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to conclude that foreign funds are being directed to the Biden Center even if not solicited or earmarked for the Center.”
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Meanwhile, the Penn Biden Center funneled a lot of talent into the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, former fellows and administrators of the Penn Biden Center now have key positions in the Biden administration.
Michael Carpenter, the former managing director of the Penn Biden Center, was named the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, based in Vienna, in 2021. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also briefly served as director of the think tank before joining the Biden administration in January 2021. Before that, Blinken was a policy advisor for President Biden’s 2020 campaign.
Juan Sebastian Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the center from April 2018 to September 2020, is currently special assistant to the president and the National Security Director for the Western Hemisphere at the White House, according to his LinkedIn page.
Donald Trump highlighted the Penn Biden Center-China connection and wondered if there isn’t more to the story.
Former President Donald Trump has claimed in a series of social media posts that China is secretly funding the pro-Biden think tank where classified materials from President Biden’s tenure as vice president were discovered.
“Wow! The Biden Thank Tank is funded by China!!” Mr. Trump wrote late Monday on Truth Social. “How much more information has China been given?”
“The amount was 54 million dollars that the Biden Think Tank received from China. That’s a lot of money. They saw the classified documents!” Mr. Trump wrote.
“Biden giving China highly classified documents would be a bridge too far. I certainly wouldn’t do that. Not a good situation for our country to be in!” he wrote.
Interest in the doings of the Penn Biden Center predates the documents scandal. In 2016 when plans for the Center were being drawn up, Hunter Biden discussed the project with advisors, including Creative Artists Agency (CAA) agent Craig Gering. An email from Gering in April 2016 was found on his abandoned laptop.
One of those plans included “wealth creation,” with no further explanation, and another included an apparent reference to the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., with a possible job opportunity for Hunter.
“The Biden Institute of Foreign Relations at the University of Pennsylvania,” Gering’s email read. “Focus on foreign policy. In addition to the institute at U of Penn, the school has an existing office in DC that will be expanded to house a DC office for VP Biden (and Mike, Hunter and Steve?). Operates like The Clinton Global Initiative without the money raise.”
Hunter then confirmed Gering’s notes but emphasized that they needed to be “very confidential” because they were not set in stone.
At least ten senior administration officials have been hired after stints at the Penn Biden Center. And is it just a coincidence, as the Washington Free Beacon noted, that foreign donations to the university tripled in the two years following the Biden Center’s opening in 2017, with most of the money coming from China?
Something stinks in the Penn Biden Center. Perhaps Republicans in Congress can make the Center a particular point of interest in their investigations of the Biden administration.
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