‘The evidence is that Adam Silver and the NBA knowingly…advance the political and propaganda interests of the CCP,’ the America First Legal letter claims.
America First Legal Foundation, the nonprofit founded by Donald Trump’s former political advisor Stephen Miller, has petitioned the DOJ to require NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the NBA itself to register as agents of the Chinese Communist Party.
The move comes after the NBA has been subjected to a barrage of criticism for behavior apparently intended to appease China. When one NBA general manager posted a tweet in solidarity with Hong Kong, which has seen its tradition of civil liberties dismantled by the Chinese government, it was soon deleted. The NBA jumped into damage-control mode as games were taken off Chinese state television. When Enes Kanter Freedom, an NBA player, began to speak out publicly about the Uyghur genocide, he was allegedly blackballed.
“The evidence is that Adam Silver and the National Basketball Association knowingly and intentionally advance the political and propaganda interests of the Chinese Communist Party and its instrumentalities in exchange for market access to the People’s Republic of China and billions of dollars in revenue,” read the letter from America First to Matthew G. Olsen, assistant attorney general for national security.
Miller styles the right-of-center America First Legal Foundation as the “long-awaited answer to the ACLU.” The foundation is citing the Foreign Agents Registration Act as legal justification. Under the law, persons engaging in propaganda and other activities on behalf of foreign governments are clearly identified for the public.
A foreign agent must make a detailed registration statement with the DOJ, keep detailed books and records in relation to their association, and make those records readily available to the DOJ for inspection at any time.
The petition from America First Legal follows a letter sent last week to the NBA from 12 Republican members of Congress, including Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Both the politicians and America First cite one inciting incident in their respective letters.
On January 21, 2023, Silver and the NBA provided the Chinese minister of foreign affairs, Qin Gang, and the Chinese Communist Party’s China Media Group “public relations services and a propaganda opportunity at the Capital One Area in Washington, D.C.,” as the America First letter puts it.
The broadcast in question is a Chinese New Year tribute, which while common throughout the U.S. and the NBA, does not normally feature high-ranking CCP officials such as Qin who “have threatened both the United State and Taiwan with escalation and military action,” as the letter from the lawmakers explains.
A similar night of programming occurred in 2022, also featuring Qin.
“While a message like may be perceived as an innocent gesture at face value, it is a blatant exertion of soft power at a venue in the epicenter of our nation’s capital and gives the CCP a platform to disseminate their messaging to a national audience,” the letter from lawmakers continues. “The NBA only further appeases the CCP and emboldens them to further humans rights abuses and threaten our national security.”
The letter from the lawmakers also asked the NBA whether it feared retribution from the CCP and how it plans to denounce human-rights abuses in China and support players who do.
The aforementioned Enes Kanter Freedom claims he was blackballed because of his activism on behalf of the Uyghurs, though Silver denies this is the case.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize why I got little playing time and was released,” he said to the New York Times. “But it does take people with a conscience to speak out and say it’s not right.”
Meanwhile, owner of the Golden State Warriors Chamath Palihapitiya is on the record saying “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay.”
“You bring it up because you care and I think it’s nice that you care. The rest of us don’t care. I’m just telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line,” he added.
Reed D. Rubinstein, America First senior counselor, explained in a statement to National Review that Silver and the NBA have put CCP money first and subjected American basketball fans to Chinese government propaganda.
“For far too long, the elites have sold out the American people to the Chinese Communists. Adam Silver and the National Basketball Association are particularly reprehensible examples of this phenomenon. They have viciously attacked the United States, calling us a racist nation full of police brutality, while pandering to the Chinese Communist Party and turning a blind eye to its totalitarian oppression of the Chinese people and its system of actual concentration camps,” Reed added.