Been following Cates several years and if there is one thing he ain't, it is pro-CCP. He was Stealth Jeff when I started reading him (as in Jeff Sessions), and has been as vocally anti-swamp/anti-CCP a person as I have run across.
He didn't go to work for Epoch until after at least 2 years of huge twatter threads on Spygate, and much other swamp-related stuff. He clearly hates them, and would not work for a pro-CCP outfit IMO. From what I understand, ownership of Epoch is Falun Gong, which CCP has been trying to eradicate since roughly 1999:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong
P.S. But I have been put together before…so believe what you might.