Lobbyists registered to work on behalf of TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have made multiple trips to the White House since July, 2021, The Washington Examiner reports.
According to White House visitor logs, the lobbyists made at least eight trips between July, 2021, and August, 2022. The Examiner reports that TikTok and ByteDance spent about $1 million on lobbying over the most recent summer.
Although these lobbyists are registered to lobby on behalf of TikTok, it's unclear whether these visits were related to that work. Several lobbyists declined to comment when contacted by the Examiner, but at least one said that their visit was unrelated to their work for ByteDance.
Rosemary Gutierrez of the firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas told the Examiner that she did not discuss the company with any members of the Biden administration during her trip to the White House in 2021 and said, "none of [her] visits to the [White House] were on behalf of TikTok."
TikTok is currently under a national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States due to concerns about the ability for the Chinese government to obtain Americans' user data about moderation on the platform.
"Politicians with national security concerns should encourage the Administration to conclude its national security review of TikTok," a spokesperson for the social media platform, Brooke Oberwetter, told the Examiner.
"The agreement under review will meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level," she continued. "These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country's top national security agencies — plans that we are well underway in implementing — to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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