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The Triad

The Ballad of Gal Luft: Whistleblower, Grifter, Soldier, Spy

Strap in for the story of the century from the Hunter Biden story's star (missing) witness.

Jonathan V. Last's avatar
Jonathan V. Last
July 11, 2023∙ Paid
Upgrade to listen11 minutes
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(Composite by Hannah Yoest / Photos: Screenshot / Shutterstock)

1. This Guy

Here is a thing we often say around here: “It’s always the ones you most expect.”

Let’s talk about Gal Luft.

Yesterday the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed its indictment of a man named Gal Luft.

Luft is the co-director of a think tank called the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and this place absolutely looks like a top-notch, totally legit organization.

In February, Luft was arrested in Cyprus on extradition terms because he’d been indicted in the U.S. for acting as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of China—as well as for arms dealing and for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Luft posted bail in Cyprus and then fled. He is currently at large . . . somewhere. Last week he made a 14-minute video from an undisclosed location and provided it to one of America’s premier media institutions—the New York Post. In the video, Luft proclaimed his innocence and dared the Department of Justice to unseal its indictment of him.

Which is what the DoJ did.


We’ll get to the substance of the indictment in a moment, but it turns out that Luft isn’t notable just for being an accused Chinese spy.

He’s also a key witness in the Republican party’s Hunter Biden investigation!

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