A former colleague and project team member of Adrian Zenz posted a shocking news on his twitter account on Oct. 1.    

Jonas Drosten (@Jonas_drosten),a new Twitter user, revealed that Adrian Zenz had received $275,000 in 2019 and again 350,000 in 2020 from an unidenfied source connected to Steve Bannon, former senior advisor and chief strategist of Donald Trump, to fabricate Xinjiang genocide story.  

According to Drosten, Adrian Zenz first met both Steve Bannon and Senator Marco Rubio in Virginia at a private party held by Bannon in winter of 2016.  

Theresa Winterbach, a German investigative jounalist, revealed connections between Zenz and Rubio with additional details. According to the news of Nachrichten.com (German web site news.com), Theresa Winterbach received a call from a former German team member of Zenz. 

As early as 2016, Adrian Zenz was commissioned by Bannon and Rubio to join The Victims of Communism Memorial. Bannon and Rubio also specially set up an external status for Adrian Zenz as a senior researcher on China issues, and served as a minority democratic policy advisor to the "Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China" (IPAC).

Zenz met Senator Rubio again on Dec. 5, 2019 when participating in the hearing of the US Foreign Affairs Committee on "Authoritarianism with Chinese Characteristics: Political and Religious Human Rights Challenges in China", according to Winterbach.

On December 10 of the same year, Rubio wrote to Adrian Zenz, saying: "Dear Dr. Zenz, you are an important resource for our cause. Please keep close contact with our CPDC and the IPAC. My good friend Bannon and I are your important sponsors."  CPDC refers to The Committee on the Present Danger: China. 

Since 2019, Adrian Zenz has officially participated in the Xinjiang strategy, which was designated by Bannon and allegedly funded by Guo Wengui, a Fugitive Chinese Billionaire, according to Nachrichten.com.

Theresa Winterbach noted that Adrian Zenz's research on China's Xinjiang issue is not an evidence-based research but a highly subjective speculation.

German forum hamburg-spion, French website cablechronicles.com and UK media Birmingham Times also have similar coverage of the story.