TikTok lobbyist scored meeting with top Biden adviser whose been slammed for China ties
Gabe Kaminsky
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A lobbyist for TikTok scored a meeting with a top Biden adviser as lawmakers pushed to have the Chinese-government-linked app banned in the United States, records show.
President Joe Biden signed a $1.7 trillion spending package in December 2022 that included the government banning TikTok from federal devices, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers are now working with the Biden administration to restrict its U.S. operations further. In November 2022, TikTok lobbyist John Breaux met with John Podesta, Biden’s senior clean energy adviser who has been slammed for his links to the Chinese Communist Party, White House visitor logs show.
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“From logging your keystrokes to pilfering your contacts, TikTok, via its Beijing-based parent company Bytedance and thus the CCP, opens up Americans to a host of abuses by the Chinese government,” Kara Frederick, who helped create and lead Facebook‘s Global Security Counterterrorism Analysis Program between 2016 and 2017, told the Washington Examiner.
“This is why every American should be concerned that the Biden administration is cozying up to lobbyists for this foreign spy app,” added Frederick, now director of the Tech Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune (R-SD) unveiled legislation on March 7 that would give the White House further powers to restrict TikTok and other foreign groups, such as the Chinese military-backed telecommunications firm Huawei, as they seek to gain influence in the United States. The bill would require the Commerce Department to find ways to limit transactions related to technology companies tied to foreign enemies, such as the CCP.
Biden approved a TikTok ban for over roughly 4 million government devices in December 2022, the same month states ramped up efforts to do the same. The Beijing-based ByteDance, which China’s government owns at least 1% of, admitted in mid-December that it gained access to the IP addresses and other data of those employed at BuzzFeed News and the Financial Times — as well as people close to the journalists.
Almost one month before, on Nov. 15, Breaux met with Podesta, according to White House visitor logs released on Feb. 28. The meeting was at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and there were five people in attendance, records show.
It’s unclear what was discussed at that meeting, and neither the White House nor the public relations firm Crossroads Strategies, which counts Breaux as a principal and director, replied to requests for comment. Crossroads Strategies also counts former Republican senator Trent Lott as a lobbyist for TikTok.
Breaux, who was a GOP senator between 1987 and 2005, had dozens of other clients in 2022, including the oil and gas giant ExxonMobil and the defense contractor Raytheon Technologies, disclosures show. He registered to lobby on behalf of TikTok in December 2020 and has since appeared on lobbying disclosure records for the company totaling $910,000.
Podesta, former president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, has faced scrutiny for his ties to Tung Chee-hwa, a top Chinese Communist Party official. Podesta once called Chee-hwa a “friend” and accepted several of his phone calls between 2015 and 2016 while chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Fox News reported.
Chee-hwa is the founder of the China–United States Exchange Foundation, which is funded by the CCP and has been considered by national security experts to be a front group for the party.
“As TikTok is under increasing bipartisan scrutiny in Congress and being banned on government devices due to security risks, why did their lobbyist get a closed-door meeting with John Podesta, someone supposedly on staff as a clean energy adviser?” asked Pete McGinnis, a spokesman for the Functional Government Initiative, a watchdog group.
“Surely TikTok is not expanding into ‘clean energy,’ so even having a meeting with Podesta raises red flags given his ties to Chinese officials,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Upon the White House tapping Podesta in September for his climate adviser role, Republican lawmakers raised concerns because of his prior praise of China.
Podesta notably said in 2013 that there are “great opportunities for Chinese firms to directly invest in this nation, to build American infrastructure, to create American jobs, and generate steady and handsome returns,” adding, “There’s also the ability for Chinese firms to invest here and learn best practices, and take those home to the tremendous and growing middle-class market in China.”
“It is no surprise that the Biden White House hired John Podesta, who has known links to China,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TX) told the Washington Free Beacon in September. “This White House does not understand that Beijing is our enemy and a part of the New Axis of Evil.”
TikTok and ByteDance spent over $5.91 million in 2022 lobbying Congress, the State Department, the Commerce Department, the Treasury Department, and other agencies, the Washington Examiner reported. Breaux previously visited in June 2022 with senior Biden adviser Mitch Landrieu, the former Democratic mayor of New Orleans, according to White House visitor logs.
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The latest visit between Breaux and a Biden administration official comes after the Washington Examiner reported in January that lobbyists for TikTok and ByteDance visited the White House at least eight times between July 2021 and August 2022.
One lobbyist, Paul Thornell of the firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas, said, “I’ll take a pass on that,” upon being asked whether TikTok was discussed during either of his three White House visits between May and July 2022.