As many of you know, and most of you appreciate, the basis of President Trump’s foreign policy is the protection of Americans. It’s one of the main reasons why he was elected, and it’s something that should be expected of anyone running the country.
Ever since he took over the White House in 2017, President Trump hasn’t backed down from taking on what he considers to be domestic and foreign threats. But thanks to former officials of President Barack Obama’s administration, Trump might have a difficult time getting ahold of one major rival.
According to the Washington Examiner, Samir Jain, a former senior director for cybersecurity policy under Obama’s National Security Council and a partner with the law firm Jones Day, has been hired by the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei as a lobbyist.
Jain works with James Cole, who was the deputy attorney general under Obama’s administration from 2011 to 2015. According to the Examiner, Huawei hired Cole in 2017 for legal representation.
The Examiner has stated that the U.S. government suspects that Huawei might be working with the Chinese government. According to the Examiner, the government suspects that they’re doing this in an attempt to access data that’s flowing through 5G cellular networks. This could obviously pose a major cybersecurity threat for Americans.
According to The Associated Press, in an effort to defend the United States against these threats, President Trump has signed an executive order that calls out foreign rivals for exploiting vulnerabilities within communications technology. Ultimately, Trump has declared a national emergency to demand consequences for these companies.
So now the question remains: What is Jain doing at Huawei? According to his Jones Day biography notes, Jain represented the Department of Justice in “White House cybersecurity meetings and international negotiations, such as China’s agreement not to engage in cyber-enabled intellectual property theft for commercial gain.”
Even though he knows about the cyber-warfare coming out of China, Jain and Cole are now being paid very well to side with the very company that they once fought against. Actually, Cole is even going so far as to defend Huawei from a list of charges brought on by Trump’s Department of Justice.
According to the Washington Examiner, the charges against Huawei include criminal conduct such as “bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to commit money laundering, obstruction of justice, illegal actions related to dodging Iran sanctions, and more.”
Trump was obviously unhappy with Huawei’s hiring of Jain and Cole. In April, Trump bashed the company’s choices by saying “this is not good, or acceptable.” Jain and Cole’s actions are going to cause plenty of headaches for the Justice Department as they get to the bottom of the international security threats
