Not just China: Tens of millions flowed into University of Delaware coffers after Biden Institute launch

by WorldTribune Staff, February 7, 2023

Millions in foreign cash has flowed into the University of Delaware since it launched the Biden Institute in 2017, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.

Saudi Arabia donated a whopping $23,610,996; China gave $6,704,250; Oman $2,513,646; and Turkey $1,673,847 to the university where Joe Biden’s domestic policy think tank is chaired by his sister, Valerie Biden Owens.

Along with Biden’s sister, the institute also employs several of Biden’s top aides and political allies.

The University of Delaware has refused to disclose the Biden Institute’s donors. The university told the Washington Free Beacon in 2020 that the records are not subject to public information laws because the Biden Institute is privately funded.

“News of the funding comes as lawmakers have called for an investigation into President Joe Biden’s private papers housed at the University of Delaware, after federal authorities uncovered classified documents at Biden’s home and at the Penn Biden Center, the president’s other foreign-policy-focused think tank at the University of Pennsylvania. It also comes as the University of Pennsylvania has faced questions from Congress about foreign donations it received after launching the Penn Biden Center,” Alana Goodman reported for the Washington Free Beacon on Feb. 6.

Government watchdogs said the University of Delaware’s secrecy over the Biden Institute’s funding raises questions about whether any foreign funds have gone to the think tank.

“The secrecy surrounding the suspected foreign funding of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware is on a par with that of the Penn Biden Center of the University of Pennsylvania,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, an ethics watchdog group that has investigated both think tanks. “The House oversight committees need to uncover the dark money sources in both cases, particularly from China.”

Last month, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz called on the FBI and the Department of Justice to search 1,875 boxes of records that Biden donated to the University of Delaware library in 2012, which are closed to the public.

Cruz said officials need to know if any “additional classified documents are in those records. Given Biden’s pattern, we should have zero reason [to] have any confidence that there are not multiple classified documents.”

In January, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul of Texas launched an inquiry into foreign funding to the University of Pennsylvania.

The Free Beacon reported that UPenn received $61 million from Chinese donors in the three years after the Penn Biden Center was launched in 2017. The university has accepted an additional $14 million from unnamed donors in China and Hong Kong since Jan. 20, 2021, according to DOJ records.


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