Biden will refund Boxer’s donation
Presidentelect Joe Biden’s inaugural committee said it would refund a $ 500 donation from former California Sen. Barbara Boxer because she was working as a lobbyist for a Chinese firm that allegedly helps Beijing imprison hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims in concentration camps.
The controversy prompted Boxer to deregister as a foreign agent Tuesday.
Initially, Boxer said in federal documents she signed last week that she would be “providing strategic consulting services” to the U. S. subsidiary of Hikvision, a Chinese firm that the Trump administration placed on a trade blacklist last year after the Defense
Department said the company was controlled by the Chinese military.
Hikvision is a large manufacturer of video surveillance equipment that human rights advocates say is being used to subjugate Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic groups at forced labor camps in China. Beijing has imprisoned at least 1 million Uighurs in northwestern China since 2017, according to reports.
President Trump signed an executive order last year banning U. S. investment in Hikvision and 19 other Chinese firms that the U. S. said had ties to China’s military.
Biden’s inaugural committee said it would return Boxer’s donation because it does not accept contributions from registered for
eign agents. Last year, Biden’s campaign described China’s treatment of the Uighurs as “genocide.”
Boxer, a former Marin County resident who represented California in the Senate from 1993 to 2017, now cochairs the Los Angeles office of Mercury Public Affairs, a lobbying firm that was working for the Hikvision subsidiary.
But after her donation and lobbying agreement were reported by the Daily Caller and Axios, Boxer said Tuesday that she would be “deregistering” as foreign agent and would no longer advise Hikvision.
“My intent in agreeing to provide strategic advice to the company was based on my desire to help make them better in every way and preserve American jobs,” Boxer said in a statement to The Chronicle. “However, due to the intense response to my registration, I have determined that my continued involvement has become a negative distraction for the effort so I will be deregistering.”
Boxer is not the only former senator working for Mercury on behalf of Hikvision. Former Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, a Republican, also registered as foreign agent to advise the company.