“A Chinese-American businessman at the center of a Clinton campaign finance scandal secretly filmed a tell-all video as an ‘insurance policy’ – because he feared being murdered.”
Johnny Chung (Credit: The Daily Mail)
(…) “In the never-before-released footage, [Johnny] Chung described how he feared for his life after he publicly admitted to funneling money from Chinese officials to President Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign.
He also claimed Democrats pressured him to stay silent about his dealings with the Clintons and said the FBI tried to enlist him in a sting against a top Chinese general at a Los Angeles airport.
The video comes amid renewed interest in foreign influence in Washington, as some members of President Donald Trump’s team have been scrutinized for their associations with Russian officials.
The video grew out of a controversy in the mid-1990s when evidence surfaced that Chinese officials were pouring hundreds of thousands into then president Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign through American straw donors.
Chung, one of the main players in the ‘Chinagate’ scandal, was accused of giving over $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee on behalf of the head of China’s military intelligence agency during Clinton’s reelection bid.
Chung cooperated with the Department of Justice during the investigation, and was sentenced to five years of probation for campaign finance violations, bank fraud and tax evasion in 1998. (Read more: The Daily Mail, 2/23/2017)