46 congressional members have made more than $35,000 from Huawei lobbyists. Huawei is labeled a “national security threat,” its products now under investigation.
From The Washington Examiner:
National security experts have warned Huawei could be used by the Chinese Communist Party for intelligence gathering purposes, and the Trump administration found in 2020 that China's military owns and backs the tech giant. The DOJ charged Huawei with conspiracy to steal trade secrets and racketeering in 2020, and on Monday, it charged two alleged Chinese spies with criminal obstruction of justice after they purportedly tried to interfere with the department's Huawei investigation. "There's really no obvious gaps between Chinese business and the Chinese government's intelligence apparatus and military apparatus," Dustin Carmack, the former chief of staff to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, told the Washington Examiner. Nonetheless, 33 Republicans and 13 Democrats accepted an average campaign donation of about $770 between September 2016 and June 2022 from those paid to lobby on behalf of Huawei, filings show. The lobbyists are Brian McLaughlin and Edward Newberry of Imperium Global Advisors, Glenn LeMunyon of the LeMunyon Group, Bret K. Boyles of Squire Patton Boggs, and Donald Morrissey of Huawei. Out of the 46 lawmakers, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has taken the most in campaign donations from any of the lobbyists. His campaign accepted $2,900 combined in October 2021 and February 2022 from LeMunyon, who was an aide for former Republican Rep. Tom DeLay, according to filings. ... "Huawei and ZTE [Corporation] are kind of crown jewels of the telecommunications business of China," Carmack, now a cybersecurity, intelligence, and emerging technologies research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. "You have to realize, these are the companies used to heavily inflict the surveillance culture all across China," Carmack said.
