Remember back in March when Marxist influencer Hasan Piker, members of Code Pink, and other commies went to Cuba to essentially back up the regime, denounce Donald Trump and the United States, and make a mockery of the lives of the Cuban people? Well, it looks like they Trump administration isn’t letting that go lightly.
Fox New Digital is reporting that the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has issued administrative subpoenas to Piker and Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Code Pink. According to Fox, it’s “part of a wider investigation into whether U.S. organizations and leaders violated U.S. laws and sanctions in supporting Cuba’s communist regime.”
If you’ll recall, Piker and Benjamin were some of the faces of the group “Nuestra América Convoy,” mostly communist sympathizers who traveled to Cuba from multiple countries. They claimed they were there to bring humanitarian aid and investigate how U.S. sanctions and blockades were impacting the people of the country, but they spent their time cozying up with the Cuban regime and left the island nation shouting the regime’s propagandic talking points.
While in Cuba, the group also stayed in a five-star hotel with power and held a concert (spoiler alert: it wasn’t acoustic) while much of the country suffered a blackout. They wined and dined at the hotel, while many people in the country dig through garbage to find food. They also took vehicle tours through the streets of Havana, as if they were on some sort of poverty porn safari tour and left claiming the people were out in the streets, having a good time.
“But today is a beautiful day out here, 75 degrees, sunny — people are partying, people are partying in the f*cking streets,” Piker said, as if he’d been at a Margaritaville resort. “I don’t know if it’s like an island mindset — I don’t know if that has something to do with it; I’m sure it has something to do with it — but, like, they’re just chilling.”
They’re out in the “f*cking streets” because they have no air conditioning, running water, or things to do inside, you moron, but I digress.
Anyway, these subpoenas are called “Requests for Information,” and they seek to find out more about the financial, logistical, and communications information involved in planning the trip to determine if they violated any of the many U.S. sanctions on Cuba, including potentially unlicensed travel-related transactions, financing, logistics, delivery of goods, or contacts with sanctioned Cuban entities/government personnel.
Fox reported earlier on Saturday that the Justice and Treasury Departments are “investigating U.S. nonprofits and activist groups for allegedly coordinating lobbying, messaging, fundraising, delegations, and political organizing efforts with Cuban government officials as part of a possible foreign influence campaign operating inside the United States.”
According to Fox, 145 U.S. organizations that report around $1billion in combined revenue “are mobilizing in support of the Cuban government and the Communist Party of Cuba.
It gives an example of how, just nine minutes after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of aircraft, and murder against Raúl Castro on Wednesday, for his role in the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown in 1996, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a “Marxist political organization deeply embedded in a ‘Hands Off Cuba’ campaign,” was protesting with pre-produced posters, denouncing the indictment.
These notable subpoenas appear to be a part of that larger investigation. “The scrutiny reflects growing concern among federal authorities and lawmakers over whether foreign actors and aligned organizations are attempting to shape American political discourse, mobilize activists, sow discord and normalize rhetoric that could encourage violence or undermine U.S. national security interests,” according to Fox.
No criminal charges have been filed, but more subpoenas are expected. This is quite a sizable investigation.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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