GOP Wants to Know Why UPenn Saw Surge in Foreign Donations After it Opened Biden Think Tank

In the two years following the school’s partnership with Joe Biden, President of Biden (L), and Antony Blinken, Secretary of State (R), foreign funding for UPenn increased by three times.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has asked Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden’s secretary of state, for information on the sudden increase in foreign donations to Penn after the establishment of Penn Biden Center. Blinken was the managing director of this center.

The inquiry, led by HFAC chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas), could shed light on the Penn Biden Center’s funding and whether think tank officials had any involvement with the university’s solicitation of foreign donors. Foreign funding to the University of Pennsylvania tripled in the two years after the school teamed up with Biden to launch the Penn Biden Center in 2017, with most of that money—$61 million—coming from China, the Washington Free Beacon first reported In 2021.

Donations “raise questions about the center’s ties to—or benefits derived from—that funding, interactions you or others had with the donors, and whether People’s Republic of China (PRC) linked individuals ever entered the center and came within close proximity of classified U.S. intelligence information,” McCaul wrote a letter Tuesday to Blinken.

The Penn Biden Center has been under scrutiny after federal investigators discovered that classified documents from Biden’s vice presidency were being stored at the think tank’s offices in Washington, D.C., as well as at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Del.

McCaul wanted Blinken to reveal his personal information. “involvement in fundraising activities for the Center or the University of Pennsylvania (including donor outreach/engagement), and whether you had knowledge of donations to the university by any PRC persons/sources,” A complete list of all “PRC persons and/or their representatives you met with while employed at the Center.”

“Were you involved in meetings/engagements with foreign persons who had made or went on to make donations to the University of Pennsylvania or the Penn Biden Center?” He asked.

McCaul also contacted Blinken to inquire about classified documents found at Penn Biden Center. He wanted to know if any of these records are State Department.

“The Foreign Affairs Committee is concerned about the national security and foreign policy implications of classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement,” McCaul wrote.

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