Live from Music Row, Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the counsel for National Legal and Policy Center attorney Paul Kamenar to comment on the letter he wrote in May of 2020 alerting Secretary of Education’s Betsy DeVos about millions in anonymous funds received by the Penn Biden Center.
Leahy: We are joined on the newsmaker line right now by Paul Kamenar, the counsel for National Legal and Policy Center. What he’s done figures prominently in a story that our own Matt Kittle, our national political editor, wrote last night on Biden’s classified documents and all the money that went from China to the Penn Biden Center. Welcome Paul Kamenar.
Kamenar: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Leahy: I was absolutely blown away by this story because here’s the piece of information that I didn’t know that you told our Matt Kittle in May of 2020. In May of 2020, you sent a letter to then Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and said this $67 million that came from China to the Penn Biden Center, like, I don’t know, like $40 million of it was anonymous, some number like that. This was not done properly and was not transparent enough. You need to investigate this. That was back in May of 2020. What’s happened since then?
Kamenar: Yes, well, not much. They really didn’t do anything with that, which is very disappointing. But we’re hoping that the new Republican majority of the House Representatives will get to the bottom of it.
And indeed, Representative James Comer, who’s now going to be leading up the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee from Kentucky there, he’s about to get to the bottom of the Chinese money that flowed into the University of Pennsylvania and then was directed to the Penn Biden Center.
And it is scandalous to see how all this Chinese money is influencing not only our universities, but also here, President Biden, and those around him. So we’re going to get to the bottom of this. And there’s also Chinese money coming to other universities as well.
And interestingly enough, the Justice Department had a program called the Chinese initiative where they were searching out how universities are being used by Communist China to infiltrate our research programs at our universities to steal our technology and sensitive information because a lot of universities have contracts with the Defense Department.
And lo and behold, 160 professors from the University of Pennsylvania wrote a letter to Merrick Garland, our attorney general, and said you’ve got to cancel this program because it’s racial profiling.
Leahy: Oh, my goodness, we can’t racially profile spies, apparently.
Kamenar: Right. So they shut that down. But now we’ve got the special counsel here who was appointed yesterday, who’s going to hopefully get to the bottom of it as well.
And they should start issuing subpoenas to Biden himself, to Tony Blinken, our Secretary of State, because he was the managing director of the Biden Center, where they found a batch of these classified documents in some closet.
Leahy: So he would have been responsible for that security breach. In your letter, May of 2020 to Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. You write, back then, Joe Biden’s affiliation with the Penn Biden Center raises concerns about foreign influence.
Particularly troubling is that the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, David L. Cohen, a political lobbyist, and Democrat fundraiser. He was a major fundraiser for Barack Obama and now Joe Biden.
That was May of 2020. This investigation, nothing’s happened on it should have been investigated for violating reporting requirements. David L. Cohen is now the ambassador to Canada.
Kamenar: That’s correct. And then the President of the University of Pennsylvania is now our ambassador to Germany.
Leahy: Oh my goodness. Amy Gutman, right?
Kamenar: Amy Gutman. That’s exactly right. And during her confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, she was asked about the Chinese money coming into the University of Pennsylvania.
And she basically pled ignorance. She said, oh, you know, we get lots of money from all foreign countries like France and Saudi Arabia and China. I’m just a president. I can’t keep track.
Leahy: Last question, Peter Kamenar. Should the Oversight Committee call Ambassador David L. Cohen to Canada and Ambassador Amy Gutman in to testify about these donations from China?
Kamenar: Absolutely. Especially Amy Gutman, because when she was asked about why are some of these listed as anonymous, she said falsely that, oh, that’s the way it’s supposed to be reported, which is…
Leahy: That’s not true.
Kamenar: She should be prosecuted for perjury. Or if she doesn’t know the law there, she shows that she’s basically an idiot about all this.
Leahy: I’ll tell you this because she was my teacher at Harvard back in 1974 in a private tutorial that I had with eight people. She is not a stupid person. She is a very very smart person.
Kamenar: Yes, of course, she’s very smart. And she’s the one that set up this Biden Center here in Washington, D.C. where they hung out. In terms of Joe Biden, he was also being a professor before the Biden Center opened at the University of Pennsylvania. Let’s think of the timeline.
Leahy: Exactly. Paul, we’re running out of time here.
Carmichael: He’s also a non-teaching teacher.
Leahy: Yes, non-teaching teacher.
Kamenar: Eight hundred thousand dollars for a handful of lectures.
Leahy: There you go. I wish I could get a gig like that, don’t you?
Kamenar: You bet.
Leahy: Breaking news. Great stuff. Thanks for joining us, Paul.
Kamenar: Thank you.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Paul Kamenar” by National Legal and Policy Center.
