Another Joe Biden veteran joins TikTok’s lobbying army
Jerry Dunleavy
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Another former Joe Biden staffer revealed he has joined TikTok’s growing lobbying army — the same day that the Chinese company’s CEO testified before Congress this week amid growing efforts to ban the app.
Ankit Desai, who worked for Biden in 2005 when the future president was a U.S. senator from Delaware, registered as a lobbyist for TikTok on Thursday while Shou Zi Chew’s contentious testimony in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was underway. The Chinese Communist Party-linked company is facing a potential ban by Biden.
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Desai, who has been president of AND Partners LLC since last year, worked as a legislative correspondent for Biden in the Senate from March to December 2005, according to his LinkedIn. According to Open Secrets, he was also a political director for Biden that year, too. Desai’s online profiles say he had also been a budget director for John Kerry for President in 2004. Desai had also worked for two Democratic senators from New Jersey from 2002 to 2004.
The disclosure by Desai said he would be lobbying for TikTok on issues related to “internet technology” and “regulation of content platforms.”
The move is the latest by former Biden staff members who have joined the app’s lobbying arm.
Jamal Brown, who served as the Biden Defense Department’s deputy press secretary from February 2021 to February 2022, joined TikTok in October 2022 to run its policy communications in the Americas, reportedly with a main focus on the U.S. Brown was also national press secretary for Joe Biden from April 2019 to November 2020, during which he worked to downplay allegations related to Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings in China and praised Twitter’s censorship of the New York Post’s stories on the laptop hard drive in October 2020.
SKDK, a political consulting agency whose founder is a top Biden adviser and whose former employees fill out key roles across the Biden administration, was also reportedly hired by TikTok in the past few months, according to Politico. SKDK founding partner Anita Dunn was named a Biden senior adviser in May 2022, with the White House announcing she would “assist in advancing the President’s policy and communications objectives.” Dunn, who has been close to Biden for many years, had also briefly worked in the Biden White House early in his presidency and played a big role in his 2020 presidential campaign.
The Chinese company has put together a large lobbying team made up of one-time lawmakers and former congressional staffers from both parties to try to shield the company. TikTok also hired Jeff Denham, a former California Republican congressman from 2013 to 2019, as a lobbyist in February through Dentons US LLP.
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TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance combined to spend more than $1 million on lobbying during the fourth quarter of 2022.
ByteDance spent $1.11 million on lobbying from October to December, and TikTok itself reported spending another $110,000 in the fourth quarter of 2022 through the Crossroads Strategies advocacy firm. The two companies spent a combined $550,000 on lobbying in 2019, $3.92 million in 2020, $6.54 million in 2021, and $5.91 million in 2022.