In the latest twist to Republicans’ sprawling efforts to tie Joe Biden to the Chinese Communist Party, an American senior executive of a Trump-supporting Hong Kong tabloid has resigned after admitting to paying a blogger as much as $10,000 to commission a fake “intelligence” report about Hunter and Joe Biden’s supposed financial ties to China.
The story of the ginned-up 64-page dossier highlights the global reach of Trump’s nationalist movement—and a strange connection between what remains of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and the impending U.S. election that some of the movement’s supporters believe could decide the city’s fate.
The conspiracy theory-filled report, published in early September, was promoted over the last week by prominent Trump allies including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who shared the article with his 2.3 million followers, and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who waved a copy of the report on his talk show, calling it “corroborating evidence” to allegations against the Bidens. But NBC then reported that neither the Swiss “security analyst” who authored the report nor the “intelligence firm” he supposedly wrote it for appear to actually exist.