Biden-allied lawmaker’s char­i­ty scored cash from TikTok’s Chi­nese par­ent com­pa­ny before key vote

Biden-allied lawmaker’s charity scored cash from TikTok’s Chinese parent company before key vote

A foun­da­tion tied to a vet­er­an House Demo­c­rat accept­ed checks from China’s ByteDance before he vot­ed against a bill that would make the com­pa­ny divest from the pop­u­lar social media app Tik­Tok, records show.
Rep. James Clyburn (D‑SC) in March diverged from his ally Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, who sup­ports anti-Tik­Tok leg­is­la­tion, in oppos­ing the bipar­ti­san Pro­tect­ing Amer­i­cans from For­eign Adver­sary Con­trolled Appli­ca­tions Act, which may lead to Tik­Tok being banned in the Unit­ed States over nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns from law­mak­ers. Clyburn, who has per­son­al­ly received cam­paign dona­tions from TikTok’s lob­by­ing army, saw at least $40,000 in recent years flood into a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion affil­i­at­ed with him, accord­ing to con­gres­sion­al lob­by­ing dis­clo­sures.
“We can’t say for a fact that his posi­tion is due to the mon­ey, but it’s per­fect­ly rea­son­able to be con­cerned about finan­cial incen­tives lead­ing to polit­i­cal incen­tives,” said Ryan Mau­ro, a nation­al secu­ri­ty ana­lyst a …