The campaign arm for House Democrats counts one of its top fundraisers as a recent lobbyist for a U.S. government-sanctioned company linked to China’s military, records show.
Steve Elmendorf was listed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in a Federal Election Commission filing covering the month of January as a bundler, which refers to influential people who collect donations and transfer them, to the tune of $125,800. But by day, Elmendorf is a lobbyist at the high-powered Washington, D.C.-based firm Avoq, formerly called Subject Matter, where until Thursday, he was registered on behalf of DJI Technology, the world’s largest drone maker that the Pentagon in 2022 placed on a blacklist of “Chinese military companies” operating in the United States.
Elmendorf’s connection to DJI, which was also dropped this week by the Vogel Group after reports on lawmakers weighing proposals to block Washington lobbying firms from scoring meetings with their offices, could become a liability for the DCCC in the 2024 election cycle. In 2020, the Commerce Department placed DJI on an economic blacklist for enabling “wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance,” specifically in connection to China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic groups. The State Department determined in 2021 that such persecution was equivalent to genocide.
In 2021, the Treasury Department also added DJI to an investment blacklist.
“Repping Chinese Communist Party-controlled companies linked to China’s military crosses a line, especially when the lobbyist in question is a political bundler,” Michael Sobolik, a China expert at the American Foreign Policy Council think tank, told the Washington Examiner. “It creates perverse incentives for members of Congress to let problematic companies off easy. In some cases, it puts policymakers in a dilemma: Do the right thing or risk losing campaign donations.”
The DCCC did not return requests for comment. In a statement to the Washington Examiner, DJI denied having a relationship with the CCP.
“DJI is a privately held and controlled company, and has been since it was founded in 2006,” a DJI spokesperson said. “The company was founded in a college dorm room to develop drone technology that can make the world better. We are not a CCP-tied company.”
The termination filing on Thursday said the U.S. firm lobbied in connection to the Countering CCP Drones Act, a GOP-led bill aiming to cut off DJI from operating in the U.S. Moreover, the filing listed Elmendorf and others as lobbying on issues relating to the Federal Aviation Administration Act of 2023.
The Washington Post reported in 2022 that DJI took steps to obscure its funding from China’s authoritarian government. DJI has received investments from China Chengtong Holdings Group, a state-owned investment company in Beijing, the outlet reported, noting that DJI pulled cash from the Shanghai Venture Capital Guidance Fund, which is under the helm of Shanghai’s Municipal Government.
The DCCC’s bundler filing also listed lobbyists for Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which parted ways this week with Hesai Group, another CCP-tied company.
Avoq is still notably registered to lobby for Complete Genomics, which the Vogel Group also dropped this week, documents show. Complete Genomics counts its parent company as the China-based MGI Tech, a former reported subsidiary of BGI Group, which is also blacklisted by the Pentagon.
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Elmendorf did not return a request for comment. Avoq spokesman Eric Herman did not say whether the firm has plans to drop Complete Genomics.
“Leave it to the DCCC to place the burden of funding extreme House Democrats’ campaigns on the back of a shady Chinese military lobbyist,” said Will Reinert, press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “The DCCC should return every cent of his influence peddling blood money.”
