Dem Powerbroker David Brock’s Group Got $100K Gift of Chinese Internet Firm’s Stock

David Brock speaks at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Ark., on March 25, 2014. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

Long-time Democratic kingmaker David Brock’s American Bridge 21st Century Foundation accepted an anonymous donor’s gift of stock in a Chinese internet firm valued at more than $100,000.

The stock was in Baidu, a big Chinese tech firm closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that provides internet services. Baidu was founded by Robin Li, who is an influential delegate to the CCP’s Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, according to the Washington Free Beacon, which first reported the story.

Baidu is part of a recently formed Chinese government group of tech firms devoted to advancing China’s growing activity in developing blockchain digital security technologies, according to Benzinga.

A spokesman for American Bridge didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ telephone request for comment.

American Bridge describes itself on its website as seeking “to shine a light on the moneyed special interests behind the conservative agenda” and to providing what it calls “rapid-response communications” designed “to dismantle false attacks on progressive policies.”

The group is the 501(C)(4) advocacy arm of Brock’s American Bridge 21st Century Super PAC, which describes itself as “the opposition research engine of the Democratic Party,” and is a cog in the immense left-wing attack machine created by Brock that also includes Media Matters for America.

The super PAC group states on its website: “In 2019 and 2020, American Bridge will be laser-focused on taking back all facets of our government. That means flipping state legislatures, protecting and expanding our majority in the House, winning governor’s mansions, taking back the Senate, and above all else, removing Donald Trump from the White House.”

The super PAC group has raised more than $23 million to date in 2020 and has spent more than $6 million in recent months on advertisements attacking Trump’s response to the CCP Virus pandemic in the U.S., according to OpenSecrets.org, which describes the group as “a single-candidate super PAC against Donald Trump.”

Brock’s empire of PACs and foundations is expected to be a major player supporting the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee against Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden.

The Brock group’s acceptance of Baidu stock could hurt Biden, whose son, Hunter, was involved with an investment firm that received $1.2 billion from a Chinese firm shortly after he accompanied his father on a diplomatic mission to China in 2013.

“There is no major Chinese company, whether officially state-owned or publicly traded that does not take direction at a fundamental level from the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing,” an unidentified senior Trump administration official told the Washington Free Beacon.

Normally talkative Democratic campaign strategists declined to comment for this story when approached by The Epoch Times, but Republicans called on American Bridge to return the gift, if it has not already done so, or donate the profit if the stock was sold.

Veteran political consultant Seton Motley told The Epoch Times on April 15, “Of course Biden should repudiate Brock—and his groups, American Bridge and Media Matters. But he won’t because he won’t have to since Big Media won’t point any of this out to him.”

Motley is the founder and president of lessgovernment.org.

Similarly, Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, told The Epoch Times he hopes “every Democrat will blast David Brock’s American Bridge over their taking Chinese Communist Party money through an Internet firm intermediary with the same ferocity that they attacked President Trump over the false Russian collusion charges.”

“If Democrats are truly worried about foreign intervention in our elections, they need to shift their focus from Russia to China. Of course, that would be inconvenient, given the family ties to Chinese government interests of their presumptive nominee, Joe Biden,” he said.

Liberty Government Affairs President Brian Darling, former senior aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), told The Epoch Times that whenever any group “knows they are funneling foreign money into U.S. campaigns, they should do everything they can to repudiate and give the money back.”

Darling said he doesn’t “expect Biden to repudiate American Bridge because the group and its core contributors play a central role in the stealth underbelly of Democratic PAC politics.”

Regarding Brock’s multi-faceted empire, Darling said Brock’s groups “have always been sketchy,” and he noted that “Brock seemed too comfortable transitioning from a conservative to a progressive. That shows that he is more committed to the game of winning at politics than any ideology. American Bridge is very closely associated with Media Matters and other extreme groups on the left that play the politics of destruction.”

Darling was referring to the fact that Brock began his political career as a conservative opposition researcher against former President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s but later changed sides and rose to Democratic powerbroker by the time Hillary Clinton mounted her first presidential campaign in 2008.

Brock’s 2017 memo to a large group of Democratic megadonors laid out a plan to stymie Trump through impeachment, endless litigation, and “partnering with Facebook to combat fake news.”

Contact Mark Tapscott at [email protected]