I just found this website by googling and thus I'm not sure of its credibility, but if I'm reading it correctly, Apple contributed $1,677,466 and spent $6,620,000 on lobbying in 2018. Seems like that could qualify as a "political donation."
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-cal-p...
- Apple, as a company, does not donate any money to political candidates, CEO Tim Cook
said on Tuesday.
- He also said he doesn't believe that political action committee (PACs) should exist.
PACs allow corporations and others to secretly donate large sums to campaigns.
- While Apple doesn't try to get particular politicians elected, it still spend
millions annually on lobbying, records show.
- Cook explained, 'We focus on policies, not politics.'
Corporate donations to political candidates are bright-line illegal, a (potentially criminal) campaign finance violation, so it would be surprising if Cook said anything else.
> He also said he doesn't believe that political action committee (PACs) should exist.
> PACs allow corporations and others to secretly donate large sums to campaigns.
This part has the facts all wrong which makes it harder to tell what is actually opposed; PAC donations are sharply limited and disclosed publicly by law, and while corporations can sponsor PACs they can only subsidize their administrative expenses, actual campaign donations cannot come from corporate funds, either directly or through PACs; PACs don't allow corporations to donate, and the donations PACs do make are neither secret nor large sums.)
Independent political expenditures as allowed by Citizens United (either directly by interested entities or by entities that collect donations specifically for that purpose, the latter of which are sometimes referred to as “SuperPACs”) allow secret, unlimited spending to promote or oppose candidates or measures, but cannot donate to campaigns or even legally coordinate with them.
It's not clear if Cook actually opposes PACs or SuperPACs, neither one of which actually matches the description of what the “PACs” he opposes are, or if he opposes some mythical thing which combines some features of PACs (donation to campaigns) with some of superPACs (unlimited quantity, secrecy, ability to use corporate funds for non-administrative functions).
I read that as "As long as you vote for what we want, we'll ignore anything else you may be doing". They can't escape politics if they want to influence (inter)national policies.
What Apple is saying is that it doesn’t have a PAC that raises money from its employees, which is legal.