Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins stood at a podium last year and vowed America would never let foreign adversaries control its land.
Someone in Washington is being paid to make sure that promise stays empty.
Federal filings just revealed who Smithfield hired to make sure Washington never acts on it.
Smithfield Foods Is 87 Percent Owned by China and Controls Your Bacon
Most Americans buying Smithfield bacon have no idea the checks flow to Beijing.
WH Group, headquartered in Hong Kong, owns 87 percent of Smithfield Foods and controls more than a quarter of America's entire pork supply.
WH Group grew out of China's Shuanghui empire.
Its longtime chairman Wan Long has been identified as a Chinese Communist Party member and served in China's National People's Congress.
Smithfield itself sits on approximately 87,000 acres of American soil.
That's the company now directing former Republican congressional staffers to lobby against legislation designed to keep adversarial foreign nations out of American farmland.
Former Republican Senate Staffers Are Now Lobbying for Chinese-Owned Smithfield
Federal lobbying disclosures don't lie.
Holland & Knight collected $270,000 from Smithfield in the second quarter of 2025 alone – with filings specifically identifying S.903, the Promoting Agriculture Safeguards and Security Act, as legislation the firm lobbied on Smithfield's behalf.
The lobbyist assigned to that China farmland fight was Christopher DeLacy – a former counsel to Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia.
By fourth quarter 2025, Smithfield had added Molly Ross to the farmland lobbying team.
Ross built eight years of Capitol Hill access inside Republican Sen. Susan Collins' office, working agriculture, nutrition, appropriations, and energy – the exact committee relationships that now determine this legislation's fate.
Those relationships, earned in Republican Senate offices, are now being rented out to a Chinese Communist Party-linked corporation.
Joel Roberson is another piece of the operation – the lobbying registration lists his government background as floor coordinator and committee liaison for the House Republican Conference, plus a stint on the House Judiciary Committee.
When Greenberg Traurig registered to lobby for Smithfield in May 2026, both Roberson and DeLacy were listed as lobbyists working on "issues related to foreign ownership of agricultural land."
A former USDA official named Peter Tabor is also on Smithfield's lobbying payroll, working the same foreign ownership portfolio.
The PASS Act Would Ban Chinese Farmland Purchases and Smithfield Is Paying to Stop It
Sen. Mike Rounds, who sponsored the very PASS Act that Smithfield's lobbyists are targeting, has warned that hostile nations are deliberately seeking positions near sensitive American military installations.
Agriculture Secretary Rollins vowed the administration would "never let foreign adversaries control our land."
Smithfield responded by hiring former colleagues of those same senators.
Oklahoma lawmakers passed legislation targeting Chinese farmland ownership – then quietly carved out an exemption protecting Smithfield specifically.
In 2024 and 2025, Smithfield spent at least $1.58 million on lobbying and more than $90,000 in political contributions during the 2024 election cycle.
That's the cost of keeping Beijing's American farmland operation running.
How Chinese-Owned Smithfield Built a GOP Revolving Door Lobbying Operation
A congressional staffer earning $80,000 a year can multiply that salary several times over the moment they walk out the door to K Street.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: staffers spend years building relationships on Capitol Hill, then cash those relationships in for clients who need those exact doors opened.
When the client is a Chinese Communist Party-linked corporation blocking legislation designed to protect American farmland, that cycle stops being a Washington nuisance and starts being a national security failure.
Republicans in Washington are telling voters that China buying American farmland is an emergency requiring urgent action.
The lobbying filings tell a different story – former Republican insiders collecting six-figure checks from Chinese-controlled Smithfield to make sure that emergency stays permanently unresolved.
Beijing doesn't need to buy Congress when it can buy the people who used to work there.
Sources:
- Natalie Winters, "Meet the Republican Lobbyists Getting Paid to Help China Buy American Farmland," The National Pulse, August 29, 2026.
- Daily Caller Staff, "How Communist China Captured Washington's Pork Lobby and Turned it Against American Farmers," The Daily Caller, July 19, 2026.
- Congress.gov, S.903 – PASS Act Bill Summary, 119th Congress, 2025–2026.
- Sen. John Cornyn Press Release, "Cornyn Introduces Bill to Combat Foreign Adversaries' Ownership of Texas Farmland," June 10, 2025.
- Sen. Mike Rounds and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto Press Release, "Cortez Masto Leads Bipartisan Legislation to Ban Foreign Adversaries from Buying American Farmland," March 6, 2025.