Who Is Gal Luft, and Is Biden (and Hunter) Afraid of Him?

Congressman James Comer is looking for Gal Luft, but will he find him by Wednesday? That’s when Mr. Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is set to hold a hotly anticipated press conference.The Republican lawmaker of Kentucky has, according to the New York Post and Fox News, been trying to communicate with Mr. Luft in an attempt to get his testimony, which potentially includes incriminating information about the Biden family.Since the end of March the American-Israeli energy expert and commentator, who was arrested in Cyprus in February on shock charges of trafficking arms to Libya and Communist China, has been missing. He categorically denied those charges, but has been incommunicado and, maybe, on the run. Before disappearing, Mr. Luft implied that it is ultimately President Biden who has for reasons that are somewhat opaque sought to silence the erudite 56-year-old energy analyst. Why, though, would the rather unassuming Mr. Luft even be on the president’s radar?That has much to do with Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, who is under multiple investigations, including those conducted by the FBI and the House Oversight Committee. All of which throws into ever sharper relief the question of who Mr. Luft really is, with some asking whether he is even real.Yes, he is real. He is, first off, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on energy, security, and economic trends. Newsweek magazine has called him a “tireless and independent advocate of energy security.”He is also an author. Books that he has written or co-authored include “Turning Oil Into Salt” and, more recently, “De-Dollarization: The Revolt Against the Dollar and the Rise of a New Financial Order.” He has hosted a Google Talk about that oil and salt equation and appeared as a commentator on CNBC. Mr. Luft has been a critic of some Biden administration policies, particularly with respect to relying on sanctions as what he has described as “an instrument of economic statecraft.” In his view, overreliance on sanctions as a first resort will ultimately lead to “currency multipolarity.”American and Israeli colleagues who have met Mr. Luft professionally over the course of their careers describe him to the Sun as an affable individual and expert in his field. They say he is passionate about bringing clarity to bear on matters at the intersection of energy and international security.Lest there be any doubt that Mr. Luft is a man who champions energy independence, just ask Esquire: The magazine once cheekily called Mr. Luft “the most hated man in Riyadh, Detroit, and Des Moines.” A man of the world, and in various respects, Mr. Luft, a former lieutenant colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces, is described by the New York Post as having “deep intelligence ties in Washington and Beijing.”On April 24, an article penned by Mr. Luft on the topic of “de-dollarization” was published in China Daily, an English-language website run by the Chinese Communist Party. That article lists Mr. Luft as a deputy director of the Institute of American and European Studies, China Center for International Economic Exchanges.The prospect of an academic expert on oil alternatives like methanol who has advised Congress on energy issues hawking weapons to Beijing and Libyans strikes most observers as straining credulity. What really happened? In March, a New York Post columnist, Miranda Devine, author of “Laptop From Hell,” told Tucker Carlson that while Mr. Luft did get bail from the Cypriot courts, that was “vigorously opposed by U.S. authorities.” Ms. Devine also told the former Fox News host that she “was told by Gal Luft’s lawyer that the ambassador in Cyprus is putting on a lot of pressure to keep him in jail. They want to extradite him to the U.S. on these charges of gun running and so on which really baffle the people in Washington who have known Gal Luft for a long time, and they say that’s not really in his nature.”The new American ambassador to Cyprus, Julie Fisher, did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment about Ms. Devine’s assertions, but a Department of State representative told the Sun previously that the department was “aware of a legal situation involving a U.S. citizen in Cyprus.” As reported by JNS, following Mr. Luft’s arrest, Ms. Fisher met twice with Cyprus’s defense minister, and also met with the Cypriot foreign minister and president. The Sun reached out to the press attache of the Embassy of Cyprus in Greece for comment, but was told there was no information available. The state department representative made no reference to Mr. Luft’s dual citizenship nor to what role that may or may not have had with respect to the issue of extradition to America. Before his disappearance, the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs indicated that Jerusalem had been dealing with Mr. Luft’s case on the consular level.A lawyer for Mr. Luft, Mordechai Tzivin, has claimed Mr. Luft’s arrest was a retaliatory move by President Biden for having cooperated with the FBI in 2019 with respect to an investigation into some of Hunter Biden’s murky business arrangements. Those apparently include deals with Communist Chinese companies, including the now defunct state-backed company CEFC China Energy. A representative of the Department of Justice declined comment for this article.What business interests Mr. Luft had in China, if any, are also not clear, though as the Sun has reported, between 2015 and 2018 he organized international energy conferences with Patrick Ho and Ye Jianming. They were, separately, business partners of Hunter Biden. Another attorney for Mr. Luft, Robert Henoch, told the New York Post that Mr. Jianming disclosed to Mr. Luft that Hunter Biden had an informant in the FBI or “formerly of the bureau, extremely well placed, who they paid lots of money to [provide] sealed law enforcement information.” His FBI mole was reportedly named “One-Eye.” The Sun attempted to reach Mr. Henoch for elaboration on these claims, to no avail.Following his arrest in February, Mr. Luft said via Twitter that “DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden. Shall I name names?” On March 26, he posted to his Twitter account a segment from “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in which Mr. Carlson specifically cited Mr. Luft’s allegations about the FBI mole and also mentioned his arrest in Cyprus. The Cyprus Mail reported that before his disappearance on March 28, police in Cyprus seized 250,000 euros from a guarantor Mr. Luft had named before the Larnaca court had ordered his pretrial release in March.Much of the information gleaned from Hunter Biden’s once mislaid and latterly retrieved laptop speaks for itself, and whatever it is that he or his father is trying to conceal with respect to alleged influence-peddling overseas is now the subject of an investigation led by Mr Comer and Senator Grassley, the Republican of Iowa.Mr. Comer’s communications director, Austin Hacker, has told the Sun he would make updates available as they happen. In a March 2 interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo, Mr. Comer commented on Mr. Luft’s allegations. Including him with other “people who have all been involved with Hunter Biden and have been on the losing side if it, and all left out to dry,” he said that “we are going to give them the opportunity to tell their story even though the DOJ and the White House are fighting us every step of the way.”Fast-forward to March 29, the date that Cyprus police say they found Mr. Luft’s car abandoned near a crossing point to Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus. That fueled speculation that he may have attempted to flee to the breakaway region, which is an anomaly in the international arena. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and declared an independent republic in the northern third of the island. Cyprus is less than 200 miles from Israel, but even if Mr. Luft tried to leave from either of the island’s two internationally recognized airports, it is possible that the local authorities would have confiscated his passports pending a decision on whether he would be extradited to America. From northern Cyprus’s Ercan airport, east of the politically split capital of Nicosia, flights serve only one country: Turkey. Yet because the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” is recognized by no country except for Turkey, passengers both arriving and departing from the rogue state’s sole airport customarily do not get their passports stamped.As for whether Mr. Luft did “name names” before his disappearance, like many things going on in President Biden’s multiverse at the moment, that is for the time being not known.

Who Is Gal Luft, and Is Biden (and Hunter) Afraid of Him?

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