Picture from Cheri Busto Facebook Page
And Illinois taxpayers are paying her salary.
Gotion received $125 million in two checks from Governor Pritzker just six months ago. There is no doubt that money in funding the $600,000 they paid the lobbying firm Bustos is connected to.
It is traitorous, in my opinion, to be lobbying for a company that is effectively controlled by Chinese communists and whose president is a Chinese communist. China is our number one adversary. But since when has Bustos cared about our military and economic security?
It is also traitorous to the thousands of taxpayers Bustos once represented and likely said that she cared about –
Gotion’s battery plant would not even be in Illinois if it weren’t for massive subsidies – the largest in the state in recent history at $537 million, until Pritzker gave Rivian $827 million just last month for their EV boondoggle.
What’s worse, Bustos should explain how working for a company that is linked to forced, i.e. slave, labor in China squares with her compassionate Democrat values. Of course, it doesn’t. She is prostituting herself for the Chinese and trading on political relationships she developed while representing citizens in Congress. You can’t go much lower than lobbying for the Chinese.
The Washington Free Beacon has the whole story on the sell-out of Cheri Bustos. Here are selected excerpts:
Bustos Registered Lobbyist for Gotion
Former top Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos quietly registered as a lobbyist to represent a controversial Chinese Communist Party-tied green energy company rapidly expanding in Michigan and her home state of Illinois, state and federal lobbying disclosures reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon reveal.
Washington Free Beacon
Gotion Link to CCP
While both development plans received enthusiastic support and financial backing from the Democrat-led state governments in the two bordering states, locals, national security experts, former State Department officials, and bipartisan lawmakers have expressed concern over Gotion’s ties to the CCP.
For example, Gotion High-Tech’s corporate bylaws state that the company is required to “carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.”
The company also hosted multiple company trips in 2021 to CCP revolutionary memorials in Anhui Province, China, the Daily Caller News Foundation first reported. During the trips, Gotion High-Tech employees wore Red Army outfits and pledged to “fight for communism to the end of my life.”
Further, Gotion Inc. is itself listed as a Chinese foreign principal in recent Foreign Agents Registration Act disclosures reviewed by the Free Beacon. The disclosures were filed on May 30 by Warner Norcross + Judd, a law firm that represents Gotion.
Washington Free Beacon
Chinese Threat to National and Economic Security
“The China problem cannot be overstated. It is real. It is massive. It is complex. It threatens our national and economic security,” former U.S. ambassador Joseph Cella told the Free Beacon. “The United States, on a whole-of-society basis, needs to quickly recalibrate at scale, to know the threat of China, track it, and institute policies and practices to counter it.”
“It is unconscionable there are agents of D.C.-based lobbying and public affairs firms, no matter their party affiliation, who are being paid vast sums of money to ensure the United States intertwined with PRC-based and CCP-tied companies to the detriment of our national and economic security,” Cella said. “We must never put money over country.”
Washington Free Beacon
Springfield politicians should pull back the Gotion deal immediately. We don’t fund our enemies.