Epoch Times - Ken Paxton Says He Was Spied on in China
Aired: 2026-03-30
Duration: 02:37


=== Sensing Totalitarian Impulses (01:15) ===

[00:00:00]  You know, you mentioned something at the beginning.
[00:00:02]  You said that you felt the oppressive nature when you went to just something oppressive about how it was in communist China.
[00:00:09]  I'm a bit like that too.
[00:00:11]  When I sense this kind of totalitarian impulse, I feel it.
[00:00:15]  I feel it very listening.
[00:00:17]  Do you have a sense where that came from?
[00:00:19]  I'm guessing this wasn't the first time you felt this.
[00:00:23]  This was back in 2000, I think it was 19.
[00:00:28]  And I was in Beijing in my hotel room.
[00:00:33]  And look, I watched probably a little too much James Bond growing up, still like James Bond.
[00:00:38]  And I set up a little thing to see if I felt like somebody was in my room with my backpack and the way I structured.
[00:00:45]  If somebody got into it, I would know it.
[00:00:47]  I put a few papers on my door to see if that.
[00:00:50]  So all the things that I did, it appeared that somebody had messed with my stuff, which made me realize, as soon as I went to dinner, that they were searching my room, and they likely had recording cameras in my room.
[00:01:02]  And that really disturbed me.
[00:01:03]  And then, of course, I was walking around Beijing, and I realized people were taking pictures of me that seemed really odd.
[00:01:10]  And then I had a travel aide with me, and they came and asked for his passport for a drawing, and he said, I don't want to participate.

=== Escaping Information Extraction (01:21) ===

[00:01:16]  And they said, we don't care.
[00:01:17]  You're participating.
[00:01:18]  Just very strange, sort of aggressive things that occurred that made me feel like I'm being watched and I'm very uncomfortable with this.
[00:01:28]  That's fascinating.
[00:01:29]  I was expecting you to say, oh, I just sort of felt it, but wow.
[00:01:33]  And so, I mean, like, do you warn people that this is what's going to happen to them when they're going, when they go over there?
[00:01:42]  Yeah, well, so I don't want to go back.
[00:01:44]  My goal is not to go back.
[00:01:46]  I went other places in China where it didn't feel like that.
[00:01:49]  You get away from Beijing, and it's less like that.
[00:01:52]  But I still, I realize this is the world where the government controls everything.
[00:01:59]  And if you're viewed as not a friend of theirs, they're trying to get as much information from you as they can.
[00:02:08]  And look, anybody that goes over there, they're trying to gather as much information off your computers.
[00:02:12]  Of course, I didn't take my laptop.
[00:02:14]  I didn't take my regular phone because I knew they would break into it and steal all my contacts and all my emails and all my text messages.
[00:02:23]  So we were all warned not to do that because you can't trust the government of China not to do that.
[00:02:27]  They will absolutely do it.
[00:02:29]  We're not used to that in this country, although we've had a little experience with that under the Biden administration, the Obama administration, where the FBI and Department of Justice did that stuff.