Federal Reserve Chairman Responds After Senate Report Finds China Targeted Employees

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has responded to a bombshell report released on Tuesday by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

According to Fox News, the report alleges that the Chinese government “has targeted the Federal Reserve in an effort to undermine American monetary policy since at least 2013.” The outlet continued:

The Chinese government has targeted the Federal Reserve in an effort to undermine American monetary policy since at least 2013, according to a report released Tuesday by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

The report detailed the actions of several Federal Reserve employees known as the “P-Network,” whose foreign travel patterns and academic backgrounds raised concerns internally. 

One of these employees was detained four times during a 2019 trip to Shanghai as Chinese officials “threatened the individual’s family unless the individual provided them with economic information and assistance.” 

Other Federal Reserve employees also had “close ties” to the People’s Bank of China, Chinese academic organizations, and the state-owned Xinhua News Agency, according to the report. 

One employee that apparently had contacts with Chinese nationals even attempted “to transfer large volumes of data from the Federal Reserve to an external site.”

Another one transferred “modeling code” to a Chinese University tied to China’s central bank, Fox News added.

The Federal Reserve’s inability to counter China’s “long running and brazen” actions is a national security threat, the Senate report said. 

Powell sent a letter to Sen. Rob Portman, disagreeing with the findings. Portman is the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee.

“We would be concerned with any supportable allegation of wrongdoing, whatever the source,” Powell wrote. “In contrast, we are deeply troubled by what we believe to be the report’s unfair, unsubstantiated and unverified insinuations about particular individual staff members.”