Leaders of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus have decried a move by Republicans to ask the FBI to investigate East West Chairman and CEO Dominic Ng for alleged communist ties as racial profiling.
The Republicans, led by Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray in a letter dated Wednesday, claiming that Ng had violated the Espionage Act.
The Biden administration named Ng to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s Business Advisory Council, a regional economic forum designed to promote economic integration and shared prosperity across 21 nations that border the Pacific Ocean, in November. At the time, he said that one of the council’s priorities would be climate change.
“The way we are living is not sustainable; we have to change,” Ng told American Banker at the time. “We don’t want to build the economy by damaging the environment further … the U.S. and China need to be the leaders.”
The leaders of CAPAC, which includes Democratic lawmakers Reps. Judy Chu of California, Ted Lieu of California, Grace Meng of New York, and Mark Takano of California, said that the accusations from Republicans are “beneath us all, particularly those entrusted with public office.”
“As with every presidential appointee, Dominic Ng, who is Chinese American, has undergone an extensive vetting process and sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution and serve the American public,” the lawmakers said. “He has had a distinguished career as president and CEO of East West Bank for 32 years. We are extremely disturbed and outraged—but not surprised—that some of our Republican colleagues in Congress would undermine his candidacy and even question his loyalty to the United States based entirely on loose claims of association trafficked on extreme-right outlets with extensive histories of spreading misinformation.”
In a statement, East West Bank struck a similar chord.
“Baseless claims, discrimination, and conspiracy theories are fueling the sharp increase in anti-Asian violence in the United States, and recent conspiracy theories have inappropriately targeted Mr. Ng,” the bank said.
The Republican letter, which which, along with Gooden, was signed by Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Ben Cline of Virginia, Doug LaMalfa of California, and Keith Self of Texas and Gooden, alleges that Ng has worked for two Chinese intelligence operations front groups.
“China has proved themselves as our greatest adversary and foreign competitor, and yet our leaders continuously jeopardize U.S. national security by allowing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to infiltrate our third-party sector and federal government,” the Republicans said in the letter. “This lack of scrutiny should be promptly evaluated, and the
Biden Administration should take immediate steps to ensure blunders like this will not happen again.”
The accusation appears based on a report from The Daily Caller, a news and opinion website founded by now-Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political pundit Neil Patel. The article claims to have matched Ng’s name to archived, translated records, and allege that the two groups are fronts for Chinese intelligence.
East West Bank said that Ng was invited to become an executive-director level member of one of the groups, the China Overseas Exchange Association, as an honorary position, and that he never attended any meetings, nor paid membership dues. The invitation was due to his work as then-cChairman of the Committee of 100, a group designed to provide a forum for Americans of Asian descent. He withdrew his name from COEA, citing non-participating, in 2014. The bank said that Ng has had no connection to the other group, China Overseas Friendship Association, and never agreed to serve as its executive director.
