TikTok hires former Biden campaign press secretary, Pentagon spokesman for top gig at Chinese-owned video app
Jamal Brown, who months ago worked for the Department of Defense, takes job at TikTok
China, TikTok looking to use ‘all sorts of tech’ for ‘espionage, blackmail’: Brendan Carr
Senior Republican and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr discusses the Chinese Communist Party’s data harvesting practices for its ‘malign goals.’
A former campaign spokesman for President Biden and top Pentagon official has taken a job at TikTok.
It was first revealed in Politico newsletter on Tuesday that Jamal Brown is "joining TikTok to manage policy communications for the Americas, primarily focusing on the United States."
TikTok has not appeared to put out an official statement regarding the hiring decision, but Brown’s Twitter bio has already been updated to show his employment for the Chinese-owned social media app.
From February 2021 until February 2022, Brown served as the deputy Pentagon press secretary at the U.S. Department of Defense. He previously worked as one of three national press secretaries for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
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Jamal Brown served as the Press Secretary for the Office of Management and Budget under the Obama administration. (Obama White House Archive / Fox News)
His experience also includes more than six years working for the White House under the Obama administration where Brown served in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He spoke on issues ranging from cybersecurity to fiscal responsibility.
President Joe Biden meets with China's President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, November 15, 2021. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Fox News Digital reached out to TikTok on Sunday regarding Brown’s employment.
In remarks to The Daily Mail, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, condemned Brown’s hiring at TikTok.
"This sort of cozy relationship between the Biden Defense Department and TikTok is alarming," Hawley told the outlet last week. "TikTok and their Chinese parent company present a serious national security threat, but Joe Biden continues to dither as they gobble up Americans' personal information."
"Get serious: make ByteDance sell TikTok," he added.
Brendan Carr, Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee hearing on March 31, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images / Getty Images)
Last week, Brendan Carr, one of five commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, argued to Axios that the Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) should take action to ban TikTok.
The video-sharing app is owned by the Chinese tech giant, ByteDance, and Chinese law mandates that companies share their data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) upon request.
TikTok app logo on the App Store. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images / Getty Images)
"I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban," Carr said. He added that he does not believe there could be, "a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [CCP]."
Press releases attributed to Brown on the Department of Defense website include the Biden administration’s supportive stance on vaccines and mask requirements for the U.S. military.
In October 2020, Brown appeared for a television interview in which he appeared to support Twitter’s squash of the Hunter Biden laptop story published by the New York Post.
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Joe Biden’s then-press secretary told Cheddar News, "I think Twitter’s response to the actual article itself makes clear that these purported allegations are false, and they’re not true. And glad to see social media companies like Twitter take responsibility to limit misinformation." The story has since been verified and political analysts have criticized Twitter for suppressing the information on Hunter ahead of the 2020 election.