REVEALED: Georgia Senate candidate Jon Ossoff promoted Communist China-run media on social media

Democratic hopeful for Georgia Senate Jon Ossoff encouraged his Twitter base to follow the Chinese Communist Party's state-run media months after his brief tenure as a congressional national security staffer with top-secret clearance.

"Esp. during 18th Party Congress, #follow @XHNews (Xinhua - Chinese state media)," Ossoff urged in November 2012, days after the general election.

He pointed his following base to read Xinhua News Agency—the propaganda organ and essential mouthpiece of the People's Republic of China—after his departure from Rep. Hank Johnson's (D-GA) office where he spent five months serving as a "national security aide."

"More evidence Ossoff is in the pocket of China," tweeted GOP rapid response director Steve Guest on Monday.

Xinhua News Agency is the largest media outlet in China, a ministry-level entity directly under the control of the China's State Council. "We are public media for the public good. We don't pursue corporate interests, nor will we yield to the pressure of ideological stigmatization and political bias," the publication boasts in its Twitter biography.

The press agency was lambasted by American lawmakers in January after the Chinese arm paid the social media giant to promote posts that attacked pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong.

"Two months on, the escalating violence in Hong Kong has taken a heavy toll on the social order," one August 2019 tweet read. "Hong Kong residents have called for order to be restored."

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) implored Attorney General William Barr to investigate Xinhua News Agency after the outlet rejected the Department of Justice's 2018 order to register as a foreign agent. The initiative under the Trump administration followed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) bipartisan appeal, specifically naming Xinhua News Agency in the document.

Ossoff will face Sen. David Perdue in Georgia's Jan. 5 run-off election, one of two races that will determine which party controls the Senate. Ossoff has struggled to dispel the incumbent's attacks that has pointed out the challenger's ties to China.

The National Review reported that Ossoff was compensated by a Hong Kong media conglomerate whose owner spoke out against Hong Kong independence, according to recent financial disclosure.

As the CEO of a London-based producer of investigative documentaries, Ossoff quietly disclosed in an amended financial statement that he received at least $5,000 from PCCW Media Limited over the last two years.

An Ossoff campaign spokesperson told the National Review that the payments stemmed from the airing of "two investigations produced by Jon’s company of ISIS war crimes against women and girls," representing "one of dozens of TV stations and distributors in more than 30 countries that have aired Jon’s work."

During his failed 2017 congressional campaign, Ossoff faced backlash for misrepresenting his "national security aide" stint in Johnson's office. Ossoff later admitted that he held national security credentials for only five months, not the five years he initially said.