Evening Edition: Chinese Spies Target Houston Citizens
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I'm Abby Hornacek. I'm Ben Domenech. I'm Dana Perino, and this is the Fox News Rundown. Wednesday, November 20th, 2024. I'm Eben Brown. Can the U.S. stop foreign agents targeting U.S. citizens and residents? Both the feds and the state of Texas say they must. The FBI says in the past they've seen incidents of agents of

foreign governments targeting victims, social media accounts, physical assaults, attempted kidnappings, forcing or coercing a victim to return to the country of origin, in this case China. This is the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. ♪

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Imagine you escape an oppressive country where you might have been imprisoned or even your family tortured. You're now in the United States where, despite our own political upheaval, there is general safety. Let's say you escaped the People's Republic of China. What would you do if China's secret agents showed up at your front door to harass you, your children? What if they tried to kidnap you?

These things are going on. And it's not just the People's Republic of China and their communist rulers. It's the Islamic Republic of Iran, just to name another.

Now, one state and the FBI say it's time to get more serious about this serious threat. Well, so you've got two separate things going on here. Fox's Jake Gibson is our producer covering the Justice Department. You know, you've got the Governor Abbott in Texas issuing a series of executive orders directing the Public Safety Department to protect Chinese dissidents.

for being threatened by people connected to the communists, to the CCP. So basically, they're warning Texans that Chinese spies, to beware of Chinese spies who are threatening and intimidating people who...

had fled the country, or in some cases, people who were born here are naturalized citizens or born in the U.S., but have family who still live in China and will threaten them, basically, that we'll do something to your family. And this is not, as you said, this is not kind of a new phenomenon. The Chinese have been doing this in the U.S.,

and elsewhere in the world, all over the world, but also in the U.S. for a long time. And what they do is they try to

They try to get dissidents, people who speak out politically against the rulers in China, against Xi and many in the Chinese Communist Party and the CCP. And in some cases, they try to kidnap them back to China, which would be a real bad situation for them. In other cases, they just try to intimidate them here in the U.S. And they set up their own

Service stations is what the FBI calls them. They're really basically a spy house. And they did it in New York City as well. And FBI Director Wray has pointed this out on many occasions that he believes that China is the biggest existential threat to the U.S. And that basically the FBI is opening a counterintelligence case relating to China roughly every 12 hours. And

He's also said in the past that if you had everybody who worked at the FBI and does cyber work,

And that's a lot of people. He said, if you put every one of them on China to combat China, which they don't, but if they did, China would still outnumber us 50 to 1. What prompted this action now from both the Texas authorities and the FBI to begin to really clamp down on this? Because as you've said, as we've talked about, this has been going on. China's not the only nation to do this.

This, you know, a foreign actor to do this here in our soil. But as you've just noticed that or as you've just notated, China is perhaps the worst offender at this. And but why now? Why? Why has it come to a head now for for American law enforcement and defense?

Well, I guess what's happening in Texas is that they're noticing that a lot of it's going on because, you know, you have the FBI in Houston and you have the governor, Abbott, who are both separately, you know, Abbott has put out these executive orders that hope to protect, that aim to protect people.

Texans, citizens of Texas, and also aim to harden their local government against would-be Chinese offenders. And then at the same time, you have

You have the FBI basically warning Texans that they need to be on the lookout for this. So I don't know that we know of a specific case, but I think we're able to glean from this that something's going on in Texas because you have coordinated actions here by the state and by the federal government to, number one, warn Texans, mostly of Chinese descent,

that to be careful that these people are out there looking to get you. And number two, to try to harden Texan state government and other entities in the state against infiltrations. You know, this also happens on social media. You know, the FBI, they call it...

They call it transnational repression. And they say that, you know, the FBI says in the past they've seen instances of agents of foreign governments targeting victims, social media accounts, physical assaults, attempted kidnappings, forcing or coercing a victim to return to the country of origin, in this case China, and even detaining a victim's family members in China.

And basically, they usually do that to target political and human rights activists, journalists, dissidents and religious and minority groups. So this is a dangerous situation for these for these people who are being targeted by the CCP. And it looks like the FBI and Texas are doing their best to try to to try to help these American citizens.

We're talking with our Fox News Justice Department producer Jake Gibson about efforts from the Chinese Communist Party to send agents to the United States to harass and even attack Chinese dissidents now living here on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. Please like and subscribe. We'll have more straight ahead.

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We've also, like I said, we've seen this with other countries. Iran comes to mind and the Iranian dissident, Masia Linejad, who lives in New York, has often been the target of Iranian agents in the United States, essentially coming for her and threatening her life.

At some point, I'm guessing that the United States or states individually will want to be a bit more proactive about these things. It's one thing to catch them as they're doing this. But how do we prevent this? Because, you know, if these are U.S. citizens or people who are here legally and under some kind of protection from a foreign government that is hostile to us, I think we'd want to do a better job at this, wouldn't we?

Well, I mean, that's the crux of the matter, right, is what are we going to do about it? And Ray has – they've done well at it. You know, when you talk about that Iranian dissident that you mentioned, you know, there have been, I think, several dissidents.

attempted plots on her life that have been foiled by the FBI. The FBI also foiled a plot on now-President-elect Trump, who at the time was a candidate. And they arrested one or two people involved with that, and I think one person is still in Iran. And I think the person who was here was talking with Iranian agents back in Iran and said,

said to them, you know, you want to target, you know, the you want to target Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. That's going to be really tough. We're going to need a lot of money to which the person, according to the FBI and an affidavit in the court documents associated with that case, to which the person in Iran replied, money's not an issue. Don't worry about it.

So, you know, this is a very serious, serious situation we've got going on with Iran where they're not only targeting American civilians, but would-be American presidents.

And so I'm sure they probably are thinking about it now that he's the president that maybe this may have, or that he is going to be the president as the president-elect, that this may have backfired on them because he's going to remember that. But it does show, as FBI Director Wray has said repeatedly in congressional testimony,

These are brazen attempts by Iran. These are absolutely brazen attempts to pull off executions on American soil. But also Director Wray is saying that China is even worse than them. He's saying that China is more of an existential threat because of the size and scope of what China is doing to us and trying to do to us. Right?

China is not only do they have spies running around our country who are trying to repress American citizens who are dissidents or Chinese dissidents and possibly repress and threaten their families in China, but they also have a vast cyber campaign against us. It's constant.

And they're also constantly testing our infrastructure, you know, our water, our power, our grid, our Wi-Fi, you know, and this is, you know, this is what other...

intelligence officials, officials in the intelligence community in the United States have said, you know, they're testing us because they're thinking if it really came down to it, they could throw us into a mass panic by affecting all of these infrastructure, all of these parts of our critical infrastructure. If all of a sudden you don't have water and you don't have gasoline and you don't have power,

That really would throw the country into a panic. Jay Gibson, our Fox News producer at the Justice Department, thank you so much for being with us on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. Thank you. Anytime. Thanks.

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