In a Lawsuit, a Former TikTok Employee Claims to Be a Source for Various High-Profile News Stories, and Makes Some Truly Bananas Claims ⇥ wired.com

Louise Matsakis, Wired:

[Zen] Goziker worked at TikTok for only six months. He didn’t hold a senior position inside the company. His lawsuit, and a second one he filed in March against several US government agencies, makes a number of improbable claims. He asserts that he was put under 24-hour surveillance by TikTok and the FBI while working remotely in Mexico. He claims that US attorney general Merrick Garland, director of national intelligence Avril Haines, and other top officials “wickedly instigated” his firing. And he states that the FBI helped the CIA share his private information with foreign governments. The suits do not appear to include evidence for any of these claims.

Here is a copy of Goziker’s complaint and it is quite the read, as you can probably imagine. He alleges, without evidence, corruption between members of the Biden administration trying to gain political favours from TikTok executives, effectively placing himself as the central character in a complex geopolitical plot.

Perhaps more believable is Goziker’s claim that he was the source for the recordings reported on in June 2022 by Emily Baker-White, then at Buzzfeed News, in an article pretentiously framed as the “TikTok Tapes”. While the story’s accuracy is not affected by a bloviating source, it sure makes me more concerned the clips were taken out of context. To be clear, I have no evidence of that and I am sure Baker-White was diligent in reporting out the story. But the claims of this suit do not instil much confidence.