WASHINGTON, DC- Follow the money. There has long been suspicion centered around social media app TikTok, based in China.
At one time there was a push to block the app from the United States over concerns the Chinese Communist Party was using the app to steal consumer data and spread Chinese propaganda. That of course was former President Donald Trump, but now the Chinese have a friend in the White House.
We have already seen the app used by a number of brain-dead individuals for so-called TikTok challenges, which only serve to showcase the naivete of its users. Now the Daily Mail reports investors in the company have been dumping cash into bank accounts of Democrats.
The outlet reports that American companies have heavily invested in the company, while donating millions to Democrats. It is no wonder then that despite concerns over the company’s true agenda, Joe Biden is pushing to allow the company to continue operating in the United States.
According to a number of GOP lawmakers as well as some federal officials, they believe the app is being used to steal consumer data and spread Chinese Communist Party-backed propaganda in order to influence the upcoming midterm elections.
The parent company of TikTok…ByteDance…has attracted politically connected financial backers in the US after investing billions of dollars into the development and distribution of the app which has an estimated billion users worldwide and an estimated one-third of all Americans.
Clearly, there are a lot of Americans who like to waste their time watching mindless content.
One lawmaker who has been paying attention to TikTok and its connection to the Democrats is Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (MO),” who told the Daily Mail, “If you’re curious why Joe Biden and the Democrats have kicked the can on TikTok for so long, just follow the money.”
“ByteDance 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.”
Meanwhile Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Daily Mail that “anything short of complete separation of TikTok from ByteDance will likely leave significant national security issues regarding operations, data and algorithms unresolved.”
So what are the ties between the Democrats and Byte Dance? One of the biggest American investors in the company, Sequoia Capital, a venture capital company, whose China affiliate owns about 10% of ByteDance. That company has donated over $8 million to the Democrats since 2020.
The Federal Election Commission reports that Michael Moritz, a partner in Sequoia, has donated over $9 million to political campaigns while significantly increasing donations to Democrats in 2020 after former President Donald Trump tried to block TikTok in the US in 2020.
Want more swampiness? Mortitz is neighbors with Speaker Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco and donated $6 million to the Democrat-backing AB PAC, $1.1 million to the never-Trumper Lincoln Project, and $1.5 million to Pacronym, yet another PAC that backs Democrat groups.
What is Pacronym? Its leader, Tara McGowan stands accused of organizing a paid propaganda campaign against Trump and so-called “ties” to the January 6 US Capitol breach on TikTok.
It was reported by Law Enforcement Today and other media outlets that a TikTok “influencer,” Preston Moore was offered $400 by McGowan’s “Good Information Foundation,” a George Soros-funded organization, for every TikTok video tying Trump into January 6.
Moore admitted that he was given specific talking points which the organization provided, many of which made spectacular unproven claims. In fact Moore said the foundation was specifically paying for “anti-Trump propaganda.” That piece may be found below.
Moritz is also a supporter of the far-left American Civil Liberties Union, pledging $20 million to the group in 2018, a gift which the executive director of the ACLU called “one of the largest in our 98-year history.”
Following the gift via the ACLU foundation Crankstart, the organization began a campaign to keep TikTok in the U.S.
The ACLU condemned Trump when he issued an executive order banning the app, calling it “an unprecedented abuse of emergency powers” and a violation of the First Amendment.
In addition, the organization also campaigned to shut down the Department of Justice’s China Initiative in 2020, which was investigating Chinese influence in scientific research and academia.
A number of other Sequoia staff are closely connected to Biden and his administration.
For example, Sequoia Capital’s senior policy director, Michael Ortiz, was a member of the Biden transition team.
In addition in 2020 and 2021, Ortiz served as a member of the National Security Council Agency Review Team while leading “the confirmation teams of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Deputy Secretary of Defense” his profile on the World Economic Forum website reads.
Want more? How about another ByteDance investor, the private equity company Carlyle Group which bought a $150 million stake in the company in 2020.
It so happens that Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein, worth a cool $4.6 billion according to Forbes, is close to Biden, and hosted the Bidens at his $20 million, 13-acre mansion on Nantucket Island two times; once when Biden was vice president and again last Thanksgiving.
Rubenstein has been tied to Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, all three of whom he interviewed for a book on leadership.
The Daily Mail reports the Carlyle Group has its own PAC, which has spent $689,073 since 2019, although it has been fairly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.
But as Ron Popeil, the famous infomercial huckster used to say, “Wait, there’s more!”
Lobbying disclosures show ByteDance hired a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to lobby for them this year. Stacy Ettinger, a partner at K&L Gates, a lobbying group, was included among a team paid $40,000 to make ByteDance’s case in Washington, D.C.
One thing we have learned about the DC swamp is that money talks. And ByteDance and affiliates are dropping a lot of money on Democrats, which doesn’t help the chances that the threat posed by TikTok will be taken seriously unless Republicans get control of the House and Senate.
A July bulletin from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that China may use financial influence to get policies advantageous to the regime out of Washington, DC.
“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] may use market access, investments, or economic dependency as leverage, and overtly press U.S. leaders, particularly those with commercial interests in China, to lobby Washington for policies Beijing favors,” the briefing said.
One source who has worked closely with congressional investigations into Chinese influence told the Daily Mail the communist nation is “good at ensuring that the right influential US investors have a vested interest in Chinese companies like TikTok.”
Meanwhile the New York Times reported last week that Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco ‘has concerns that the terms are not tough enough on China,” two sources told the outlet. Monaco is leading negotiations over TikTok’s status in the US.
A number of lawmakers are concerned over the Biden administration’s apparent willingness to keep the app available in the US given the national security concerns. Now it may be obvious why. The company is dropping a lot of money into Democratic Party coffers.
It isn’t only Republicans who are asking the administration to crack down on TikTok. In June, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called on Apple and Google to remove the app from their stores, claiming it “poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data.”
The Daily Mail also notes that TikTok is currently in talks with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US over national security concerns related to its ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
But don’t worry. The Biden administration is all over it.
For more on attempts by a Soros-tied nonprofit to use TikTok influencers to lie about January 6, we invite you to:
DIG DEEPER
The following may included content which is editorial in nature and which reflects the opinion of the writer.
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Maybe one of the new 87,000 IRS agents funded through the “Inflation Reduction Act” can handle this.
“This” is a group called the hilariously named Good Information Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that was started by none other than George Soros “to tackle the growing information crisis in America that is undermining social trust, harming public health, and damaging our democracy.”
Oh, what could possibly go wrong.
The group is apparently seeking to pay social media influencers to push anti-Trump propaganda related to the absurdly named “insurrection” of January 6, 2021, as a means to assist the Democratic Party to rule in perpetuity, in this case to assist them in the leadup to the November midterms.
According to one such influencer, Attorney Preston Moore who posts legal commentary on TikTok under the handle of @TrialByPreston, he was approached by a woman stating that she was from the Good Information Foundation and offered him money to post content reflecting ill on Trump, according to BizPacReview.
TikTok lawyer can be found here and he also has Instagram! Need more honest non bias voices like his! He’s kept it straight forward on the legal side of Trumps Raid. @JackPosobiec https://t.co/f4qUUUNmp0 pic.twitter.com/jGh3p8fC1Y
— UM News (@UltraMagaNews) September 17, 2022
In the video which has since gone viral, Moore speaks of a woman who was identified as “Jane” who offered to pay him $400 if he created a January 6-related video that would support the false narrative being pushed by Democrats that Trump had encouraged supporters to attack the Capitol, which is blatantly false.
This of course would allow Democrats to continue weaponizing the federal government against supporters of Donald Trump.
“I was just offered $400 to make an anti-Donald Trump propaganda post related to the January 6 investigation that is completely not true,” Moore said.
“I should start out this video by saying that I’m not a Donald Trump supporter so that should give a little bit of context to where I’m coming from. I’m an attorney. I post legal news and analysis on related topics.”
Moore then related that he received an email from somebody with the Good Info Foundation, whom he referred to as “Jane.”
“Jane sent me a message letting me know she represented the Good Info Foundation and that she was willing go offer a paid collaboration to discuss some topics related to January 6,” he continued. “I said, sure, why not, I’ll learn some more.”
Moore continued that “Jane” said the foundation would give him $400 “to make a post on my page and then share it to Instagram.”
— km381 (@karenm37360796) September 17, 2022
He then said there are “specific requirements in order to obtain that $400 of how I should refer to the January 6 Capitol raid,” he said in the video, showing what the requirements were.
“Number one, I must call this a criminal conspiracy. Number two, I must say Trump Republicans are responsible. Number three, I must frame it as an attack on my country, an attack on America or Americans, a criminal conspiracy and a committed crime,” he said, which described the very specific language this “truth telling” organization was soliciting.
Continuing, he said, “I must attribute the matter to MAGA Republicans [straight out of the Biden playbook], I must make clear that this was ongoing and unresolved, and most importantly, that I must channel all of this onto the manipulation of voter agency so that I can turn their anger around this event into defiance that would make people more likely to vote in [the] midterms,” Moore continued.
Moreover, he was to make the connection “that the Trump campaign paid literally millions of dollars to make January 6 happen,” an allegation that has not yet been even raised by the January 6 Pelosi inquisition hit squad.
It was that last allegation that caught Moore’s rapt attention, and he questioned “Jane” about it. He asked her what the basis was for that claim that the Trump campaign had paid millions of dollars to fund the January 6 Capitol breach.
“’Jane doesn’t answer the question,” instead telling him, ‘Hi Preston, if you don’t want to state that in the video it’s fine. You don’t have to use all the bullet points provided.’”
Moore however continued to press, asking if there was any support for that claim. Again, “Jane” refused to answer.
“’ Let me know if you are interested and the rate works for you, thanks so much.’”
You see, “Jane” refused to answer the question precisely because there is zero support for the claim that the Trump campaign paid anyone for participation in January 6.
“I’m not interested and the rate doesn’t work for me,” Moore continued. “This is the Good Info Foundation. They boast on their homepage that ‘good information is the lifeblood of a democracy.‘ They further cry that ‘we are in an information crisis’ and you know the crazy thing about all of that? They’re right.”
From the group’s website:
“America is in an information crisis. Disinformation is threatening public health, safety, social trust and democracy.”
They then cite statistics about the numbers of people believe the 2020 election was stolen, believe voter fraud is a major problem, don’t trust the “traditional” media and claims 265 million Americans can’t name their state legislators. We would leverage that final statistic is largely incorporated of gender studies majors from Berkeley and other liberal hell holes.
The implication of course is that the average Trump voter is a conspiracy nut who believes there is a problem with our election system and oh yeah, they don’t trust the mainstream leftist state-run media. Oh, and to insinuate that 265 million Americans can’t name their legislators, again the implication is that Trump supporters are a bunch of hayseeds.
According to Axios, the organization is backed by Soros and another billionaire Reid Hoffman and will be led by a woman named Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who at one time ran a progressive nonprofit called ACRONYM.
That organization “ran one of the largest digital campaigns to defeat President Trump in the 2020 election, totaling $100 million.” One of the companies it is invested in, Shadow, was responsible for the delayed reporting of the Iowa caucus results in 2020.
If anyone wonders why LinkedIn appears to be leaning a bit to the left and has engaged in censoring conservatives, including Law Enforcement Today, our founder Robert Greenberg and our National Director Kyle Reyes, Hoffman is the founder of LinkedIn.
One or more of these 87,000 new IRS employees might want to take a look at the Good Information Foundation’s 501(c)(3) status as a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. From the IRS Code:
“Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.” [emphasis added]
It continues:
“…voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute a prohibited participation or intervention.”
Wow! Sounds like the old Good Information Foundation appears to be operating in violation of the IRS Code as a “tax-exempt nonprofit.” We’ll wait to see the IRS pull their tax exempt status with bated breath.
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