A California land grab raised multi-faceted concerns as an unidentified investors’ suit against sellers appeared designed to force farmers to “bankrupt themselves.”
(Video: NewsNation)
Under President Joe Biden’s leadership, America has projected weakness on the foreign stage and China has capitalized on that. Now, as Chinese purchases of American land have climbed considerably in recent years, the mysterious buyers of nearly 55,000 acres surrounding Travis Air Force Base in California are the ones crying conspiracy.
Reaching back to 2018, a group known as Flannery Associates have been approaching landowners in Solano County around the base, closing purchasing deals well over the market value now totaling around $800 million. Now a suit filed in May in the Eastern District of California by Flannery raised concerns from Rep. John Garamendi (D).
Speaking with NewsNation about the $510 million suit, the congressman argued, “It is a suit designed to force the farmers to lawyer up, spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyering and maybe at the end of the day, bankrupt themselves. In fact, that has happened to at least one family that I know of and I’ve heard rumors that another family simply said we can’t afford the lawyers.”
Flannery claimed to have texts and emails to support their claim that the various private owners “…saw an opportunity to conspire, collude, price fix, and illegally overcharge Flannery, a buyer who had approached these landowners on an individual basis to buy their properties in the Jepson Prairie and Montezuma Hills area of Solano County, California.”
“This area hosts several utility-scale commercial wind farms, transmission lines, substations, and other energy infrastructure, as well as numerous environmental conservation and mitigation projects,” the suit further detailed before accusing the “conspirators” of trying “to make hundreds of millions.”
Along with concerns about the detriment the suit could cause to the land owners being sued by Flannery, Garamendi noted the obvious issue of the location of the purchase before positing the potential for Chinese involvement.
“The fact they chose to buy all three sides of the Travis Air Force Base raises immediate questions about national security,” the congressman told NewsNation. “So, is this Chinese money? We don’t know, but we do know that the Chinese money was being used in North Dakota and we have a very deep suspicion, given the amount of money, given the lack of attention to values, that they simply want to acquire all of this land.”
Earlier this year, it was reported that the city council in Grand Forks, North Dakota had unanimously voted to prevent the Chinese Fufeng Group from developing the 300-acre plot of land near Grand Forks Air Force Base they had purchased for $2.3 million. Their decision was based on concerns about ties between Fufeng and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
USA, USA, USA! North Dakota votes down Chinese’s company to chantshttps://t.co/rOhxnT4X5y
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) February 7, 2023
Similarly, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had worked with his state legislature this year to ban the CCP from purchasing “farmland or land near our critical infrastructure. We do not want the CCP in the Sunshine State,” he had said at the time.
“I think ours has been the most ambitious of anywhere in the county and I think it’s likely to be something that is a model for other states to follow…soon,” the presidential hopeful had told reporters.
Whether or not a policy like that had been in place in California, investigations from the federal government have reportedly been fruitless in determining whether or not Flannery is controlled by U.S. citizens with 97 percent of their capital for U.S.-based investors as they have claimed. Evidently, officials have been unable to determine who is backing the company, NewsNation reported.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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