The other side of the garlic war

Regarding the Journal North’s Oct. 20 article “Dixon farmer starts a global garlic war,” readers should know that Stanley Crawford’s new book, “The Garlic Papers,” is a work of personal fiction and in no way is an accurate journalistic representation of what actually happened at the Department of Commerce.

Stan Crawford has accepted cash and expensive equipment, both directly and indirectly, from Chinese businessmen Jack Bai and Wang Ruopeng, who are trying to gain an upper hand for their Chinese garlic companies in the American garlic market. Bai and his companies are direct competitors and longtime enemies of Harmoni, the company Crawford and his attorney Ted Hume are trying to take down. Bai and his companies owe our federal government more than half a billion dollars in back tariffs, which were assessed after these companies were found to be dumping garlic on the American market.

Major American domestic garlic growers have not supported Crawford’s work at the Department of Commerce and federal regulators have determined that Crawford and Hume made dishonest filings at the Department of Commerce and were actually working at the behest of Chinese businessman Jack Bai rather than on their own accord. Hume (who has been Bai’s lawyer for more than a decade) stands accused of providing false and misleading information by both the DOC and the U.S. Court of International Trade.

The publisher should never have allowed Crawford this bully pulpit simply because he is a “famous author.” It is a shame that Crawford has chosen to use this pulpit as an attempt to “anonymously” trash his former associates and neighbors with outright falsehoods, halftruths, lies of omission, mischaracterization of events and manipulation of context regarding the story of what happened at the Department of Commerce from 2015-19.

He even goes so far as to accuse his “fellow garlic growers” of committing various felonies with no evidence other than the narrative concocted by his attorney. There is voluminous public record about what happened and those who would write about this (or let others write about it) should do their due diligence first. KRISTEN DAVENPORT LLANO