During the CNN and New York Times Democrat debate on Tuesday night, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) suggested that politicians cannot pretend to take on Big Tech and big pharmaceutical corporations after taking their donations — something Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has continued to do throughout her run for president.
After Harris demanded that tech corporations like Twitter ban President Trump from their platforms, Warren touted that she, unlike Harris, has refused to take donations from Big Tech and Big Pharma.
Harris, despite claiming that she will fight Big Tech and Big Pharma companies if elected, has taken donor money from employees of the country’s biggest tech conglomerates and pharmaceutical executives, as Breitbart News has detailed.
In fact, Harris’s campaign has been almost exclusively propped up by a base of elite coastal donors with less than 40 percent of her funding coming from small-dollar donors giving $200 or less. The majority of Harris’s donations, more than 56 percent, have come from large-dollar donors giving $200 or more.
Harris’s top donors include lawyers from the Paul, Weiss, et al. law firm, which has represented Citigroup, as well as American job outsourcers and offshorers such as the Walt Disney Company; multinational communications services AT&T; Alphabet Inc., which is the parent corporation of Google; as well as Apple Inc.
In May, billionaire Gordon Getty of the Getty Oil dynasty hosted a fundraiser for Harris at his mansion in San Francisco, California, with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Campaign records find that the billionaire Getty family has contributed thousands to Harris.
Likewise, though Harris’s campaign has claimed that she does not accept funding from Big Pharma, a number of pharmaceutical executives have gifted the California senator with campaign cash, The Intercept notes:
Donors include Therese Meaney, a vice president at Endo Pharmaceuticals, a company that manufacturers opioid painkillers, who has given $1,250 to the Harris campaign; Ted Love, the president and chief executive of Global Blood Therapeutics, a startup biopharmaceutical company, who gave $2,800; J. Dana Hughes, a vice president at Pfizer, gave $250; Damian Wilmot, an executive at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, gave $1,000; and Jeffrey Stein, the chief executive of Cidara Therapeutics, another drug startup, who gave $1,000.
Silicon Valley’s tech elites have been major contributors to Harris’s bid as she has campaigned against slapping tariffs on the foreign-made products of tech corporations.
Seven Facebook executives and employees have donated $1,000 or more to Harris’s campaign, while nearly 20 Google executives and employees have donated more than $1,000, four Twitter executives and employees have donated more than $1,000, and 71 Amazon executives and employees have donated anywhere from $5 to $2,000.
The Walt Disney Company’s Craig Hunegs, who heads Disney Television Studios, is one of Harris’s top donors, giving nearly $6,000 to her campaign. California real estate developer John Dinapoli, Coastal Healthcare Services President Quiana Mitchem, and New York Attorney Fraser Hunter Jr. have all donated more than $5,000 to Harris as well.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.