Tuesday 4 October 2022 04:48 PM US investors in TikTok are donating millions to Dems as Biden pushes to let ... trends now
American companies invested in TikTok have been courting and donating millions of dollars to Democrats, DailyMail.com has learned – just as President Joe Biden is pushing to let the Chinese social media app continue to operate in the US despite growing concerns about its real agenda.
Top Republican lawmakers and some federal officials believe TikTok is being used to steal consumer data and spread Beijing-backed propaganda to influence the upcoming midterm elections.
TikTok's parent company ByteDance has lured politically well-connected financial backers in the US after it plowed billions of dollars of investments into the wildly successful app that now has a billion users worldwide – including about a third of all Americans.
‘If you’re curious why Joe Biden and the Democrats have kicked the can on TikTok for so long, just follow the money,' Republican Senator Senator Josh Hawley told DailyMail.com
'A ByteDance [owner] hires top Democrat staffers as lobbyists and their corporate allies donate millions to Democrats. This is the same company that won’t even commit to stop sending American data overseas to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. The Democrats’ cronyism is putting the American people at risk.’
TikTok's parent company ByteDance has lured politically well-connected financial backers in the US after it plowed billions of dollars of investments into the wildly successful app that now has a billion users worldwide – including about a third of all Americans
Marco Rubio, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told DailyMail.com that ‘anything short of a complete separation’ of TikTok from ByteDance ‘will likely leave significant national security issues regarding operations, data and algorithms unresolved’.
Among the biggest American investors is venture capital giant Sequoia Capital. Its China arm, which reportedly owns around 10% of ByteDance, has donated over $8million to the Democrats since 2020 and has led further investment rounds in the Chinese firm since.
According to Federal Election Commission data, Sequoia partner Michael Moritz has donated more than $9million to political campaigns – and significantly ramped up his donations to Democrats in 2020 after Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok in the US.
Michael Moritz, chairman and managing partner of Sequoia Capital, which reportedly owns around 10% of ByteDance, has donated over $8million to the Democrats since 2020
Over the last two years Moritz, who is neighbors with Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, gave the Democrat-backing AB PAC $6million, $1.1million to fiercely anti-Trump Republican PAC the Lincoln Project and $1.5million to Pacronym, a PAC backing Democrat groups.
Pacronym’s leader, Tara McGowan, has been accused of organizing a paid ‘propaganda’ campaign against Trump and his links to the January 6 riots through TikTok.
Conservative attorney and TikTok star Preston Moore revealed this month he was one of several influencers offered $400 by McGowan’s nonprofit the Good Information Foundation to post a video about the January 6 hearings.
Moore claimed the foundation was paying for an ‘anti-Trump propaganda post’.
In 2018 Moritz and his wife pledged $20million to the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a gift its executive director described as ‘one of the largest in our 98-year history’.
Following the massive gift made via their foundation Crankstart, the ACLU then started campaigning for TikTok to remain operating in the US.
Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein, who is worth $4.6billion according to Forbes, is a close ally of President Biden, and has hosted Joe and Jill Biden at his $20million 13-acre Nantucket mansion twice
