When the Biden administration nominated Michael Sfraga to be special ambassador to the Arctic, he failed to disclose his deep history with Russia and China, Fox News wrote in a news story.
The Senate voted on Alaskan Michael Sfraga’s confirmation Tuesday, after Sen. Lisa Murkowski continued to push for his confirmation, but with the objection of many Republicans who are worried about his ties to China and Russia, where he has traveled and spoken extensively at conferences over the years.
Sfraga’s nomination by President Joe Biden had been pending for more than a year, while Sen. Murkowski worked hard to get it on the floor. The chairman of the Polar Institute and the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, Sfraga is now in charge of leading diplomatic relations between the eight Arctic nations of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. Each of those countries also has its own U.S. ambassador, and Sfraga is an ambassador at large.
Ambassadors at Large to deal with specific foreign policy issues, rather than nation-to-nation relations.
But his ties to Russia and China led Sen. Jim Risch, Idaho, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, to write a letter in 2023 asking the FBI for help in vetting Sfraga, Fox News Digital wrote.
Sfraga “negotiated joint partnerships with Chinese academic institutions tied to defense and intelligence services and spoke glowingly about the two U.S. adversaries in interviews for different publications – all of which he failed to reveal until confronted by Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff.”
According to Fox, Sfraga had to update his disclosures three times, claiming he had forgotten to mention his record of trips and collaboration with Chinese and Russian leaders.
Risch had placed a hold on Sfraga’s nomination for months, which prompted Republican infighting, the news story said.
“Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R–Alaska, recommended Sfraga to the Biden administration, and she defended him to the committee. ‘If there is any challenge that you have as a committee, it’s that his expertise in the Arctic is so voluminous,’ she said. ‘It takes a while to wade through all of it.;”
Sfraga was also at the center of creating memorandums of understanding for partnerships between the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Chinese universities, including Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which has been designated a “high threat” due to its high-level defense research and alleged ties to cyberattacks, Fox wrote.
That partnership included access to UAF’s computers, as well as policy and legal reviews on any Arctic region subject, in addition to research and exchange programs, the news story says.
Read the full report at this link.
Although Murkowski pushed hard for his confirmation by the Senate and was overjoyed at the result of Democrats voting for her choice of Arctic ambassador, Sen. Dan Sullivan was in New York City during the vote and thus did not cast a ballot, as he was serving as the Republican representative to the United Nations.
It’s uncertain that Sfraga will remain as ambassador under a Trump Administration, as Murkowski has no pull with her deep adversary, Donald Trump.
