A stateless man of unknown origins will tonight cross our borders without proper documentation and, using technology we do not understand, enter the homes of millions of people without even so much as knocking first.
He will also flood our market with imports allegedly made by workers laboring under icy conditions year-round.
Why succeeding governments over the years have done nothing to halt this annual practice suggests either years of incompetence or, more sinisterly, collusion.
It’s long past time for an investigation. The activities of this mysterious philanthropist known only as “Santa Claus” touch on multiple issues that the incoming Trump administration should find of interest — border security and trade among them.
Until then, I have taken it upon myself to make use of all my journalistic skills to try to see what I can find out about this so-called Claus fellow. What I’ve found may shock you.
Claus claims an address at the North Pole. Google Earth shows no residence at the pole, which means Claus’ story is either a fabrication or that he’s in cahoots with Big Tech. That’s just the beginning. Russia claims the North Pole, which suggests that Claus might be a Russian citizen or, at the very least, a Russian agent. While accounts of Claus date back to czarist times, you’d think that our government would want to verify that Claus is not operating on behalf of Vladimir Putin’s notorious security services.
Other evidence suggests that Claus has ties to China.
Statista reports that, while money is the most common desire at Christmas in the United States, clothing is second. In 1960, 95% of the clothes Americans wore were made in this country, much of it in factories across Southwest and Southside Virginia; the largest textile factory in the South was once in Danville. Today, that figure is about 3%. Where does our clothing come from? Good Maker Tales reports that 65% of the world’s clothing is made in China. Claus may not be a Chinese agent, but every time he delivers clothing, he appears to be acting on China’s behalf. That ugly sweater you’re getting? That is nothing more than China undermining our economy. Toys? Same story: 79% of the world’s toys are made in China. We have put the happiness of our children in the hands of a foreign adversary. This is how our enemies bring us down: They don’t have bigger bombs, but they can manipulate our children. What are you more afraid of on Christmas Day? A Chinese army marching down the street or your kids screaming because they didn’t get their MrBeast Lab Mutators or their Ms. Rachel Speak and Sing Doll? Uh-huh, I thought so.
About a year ago, Gov. Glenn Youngkin nixed a state bid for a Ford battery plant that was looking at Pittsylvania County because of its ties to a Chinese company. Congress has passed a law that would force TikTok’s Chinese-based parent company to divest of the popular social media app if it’s to stay available in the United States. So why is there no similar uproar over Claus and his quite obvious ties to China? I’ve not found a single news release from the governor or any of our congressional representatives expressing the least bit of concern about Claus. At the very least, why is Claus not being hauled before a congressional hearing? Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Do your duty, congressman!
We are told that Claus flies a vehicle powered by, checks notes, reindeer. This is obviously a cover story because we all know that reindeer can’t fly. I’ve double-checked this with the Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension Service just to be sure. That means Claus must be using some technology that is unknown to us. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, or will until the new Republican majority takes over in January. He’s sat in on classified briefings about UAPs, or “unidentified aerial phenomenon,” which is what we used to call UFOs except calling something a UFO sounds like you’re trying on your tin foil hat, while UAP sounds like something a government bureaucrat invented. You know, one of those government workers Elon Musk wants to get rid of.
Anyway, the point is, Warner knows some secrets. Is Claus one of those secrets? We don’t know. It’s a secret. I think, though, the public has a right to know. What do we know about this Claus fellow? Could his “reindeer” technology — probably a code name — be used against us? We need to get our hands on Santa’s sleigh and send it to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to be studied. This is the second-largest university-level transportation institute in the country. The researchers there are doing work on self-driving cars. I bet they could figure out what makes this thing go. Then again, when Warner was in Blacksburg in November, he had a classified briefing at Virginia Tech’s National Security Institute. For all we know, which is basically nothing, that could have been about Claus. Virginia Tech’s origins are as an agricultural school. If reindeer are somehow involved, it would make sense that Tech would be involved in studying them. Virginia Tech has also seen a big jump in federally funded research, with the biggest increases coming in the national security sector. After a while, all this starts to add up, doesn’t it? So maybe the government is doing something about Claus; it’s just not doing enough.
A few weeks ago, Virginia legislators were presented with an eye-opening report on data centers and their energy demands. The report said that if data centers continue to grow unchecked in Virginia, the demand for electricity will triple by 2040. That’s going to require a whole lot more solar farms across Southside, whether people want them or not. Claus may have a role in this, too. How does he keep track of all the requests people send him? Pictures traditionally depict Claus with a handwritten list. That’s got to be propaganda or what we now call “fake news.” You can’t keep track of millions of requests on a handwritten list. Claus must have a computerized data storage system, and given the presumed volume of requests he handles each year, it must be gargantuan. We know that much of the world’s internet traffic flows through Northern Virginia, so he’s likely to have some of his storage being handled here. So how many data centers is Claus personally responsible for? More to the point, how much land in rural Virginia is being covered with solar panels just to satisfy his record-keeping? Ratepayers of the state’s utilities ought to know. Is Claus paying his fair share or are the rest of us being forced to subsidize his operations? Make Claus pay his own way!
Claus is always represented as a benign figure, yet he and his spokespeople admit that he keeps an extensive “naughty and nice” list. That seems a gentle way of saying Claus keeps an Enemies List. Is this the kind of person we want to be a role model for our children?
There seems to be a bipartisan consensus not to ask questions about Claus.
Democrats seem to be quite happy about someone who gives out “free stuff,” but you’d think they’d be skeptical of Claus’ wealth. He seems to have no known source of income, but all those presents cost money. Who’s really paying? Or is Claus really just an oligarch? To afford all those presents, Claus must be a zillionaire who would make Elon Musk look like a Dickensian peasant begging for gruel. Does Claus pay any taxes? Is his foreign residence simply a tax dodge? And what about his carbon footprint? It must be massive! That whole thing about a reindeer-powered sleigh that seems to create no carbon emissions seems nothing more than green-washing.
You’d think the evangelical wing of the Republican Party would also be concerned about Claus. His emphasis on consumerism threatens to overshadow the true meaning of the Christmas holiday. However, other Republicans are obviously aligned with Claus, particularly those in districts with coal mining. Claus is said to dispense a lump of coal to those who have been naughty. With the state of human behavior being what it is, Claus must distribute a lot of coal.
Globally, the demand for coal hit an all-time high this year, according to the International Energy Agency. That was attributed to growing demand by China and India, but how much is really due to Claus? We don’t have figures for this year yet, but last year, coal production in Virginia was up 2% over the year before, according to the Virginia Department of Energy, which prefers to go by the hip name of Virginia Energy, which sounds like a sports team. Maybe one that would have played in that sports complex in Alexandria the governor was trying to pull off. Enough of that, though, back to coal. Last year, coal exports through Hampton Roads were up 12%. Again, exports are driving that because U.S. coal consumption is down. Claus had to get his coal somewhere, and we shouldn’t be surprised if some of that coal is being shipped through the port at Hampton Roads. All the naughty people in the world this year could be getting a lump of Virginia coal.
That means coal interests back Claus. So does the dairy industry. Claus is said to have an enormous appetite for milk and cookies. Milk production in Virginia is also increasing, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Virginia’s top milk-producing counties are, in descending order, Rockingham, Pittsylvania and Augusta. Don’t look for politicians representing those areas to be critical of Claus; they want to keep this milk-guzzler going. The sugar industry supports him, too. All those cookies, you know.
What I’m seeing is a shadowy figure who apparently has both political parties in his pocket. If that’s not The Swamp, then I don’t know what is. Nevertheless, I see no contributions from Claus listed to either in the database of the Virginia Public Access Project, the nonprofit that tracks campaign contributions in Virginia. That tells me just one thing: Claus is using dark money to fund his lobbying efforts.
Somehow, Claus has managed to cultivate a global persona without giving a single interview or making a single public appearance. I thought I saw him at the mall, but it turned out to just be some random guy with a fake beard (or maybe a crisis actor?) who refused to answer my questions about his connections to the Claus organization and kept saying something about how if I didn’t leave him alone, he’d have to call security.
The obstacles we face every day in reporting the news are real; we depend on your generous help to make sure we have journalists across Southwest and Southside asking questions on your behalf. This year at Cardinal we’ve reported on multiple stories where public officials were somewhat less than cooperative, but we’ve never been stonewalled the way we have with this Claus investigation.Claus has insulated himself so successfully that not a single Freedom of Information Act request to federal, state or local governments has turned up any mention of this mastermind. Then again, we all know that FOIA has far too many loopholes, and anything dealing with Claus might well come under those undisclosed legal or personnel exemptions.
I can only conclude that Claus has managed to infiltrate our government and other major institutions at the highest levels. His influence might be benign now, but how can we be sure it will stay that way? Claus seems to have the biggest monopoly in the world; so big that governments are afraid to touch him for fear of … well, what? Claus, by all accounts, has a global surveillance network. What’s he got on our leaders? The public has a right to know if they’ve been compromised by Claus.
If that’s not what’s going on, how do we explain this whole Claus phenomenon? Are we to believe that millions of ordinary citizens have somehow joined together in a generational conspiracy theory to simply make up a preposterous story about a polar resident with a manufacturing empire staffed by elves and products delivered using Nordic mammals? Nah, that can’t be. Can it?
One federal courthouse gets renamed. Should another be?
Congress last week voted to rename the federal courthouse in Roanoke after the late civil rights attorney Reuben Lawson. There’s another courthouse in the western part of Virginia that doesn’t have a name at all, but there’s an obvious person it should be named after. I’ll explore that in Friday’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter. You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters: