'This is crazy!' USAID, 'censorship nerve center' collaboration with U.K., disinfo cops wows Musk

As the Trump administration battles the courts to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the shuttered Global Engagement Center reconstitutes itself like a Terminator into a purportedly foreign-only "hub" to counter manipulation and interference, newly released public records detail the extent of their past efforts to police speech.

America First Legal, founded by two-time Trump White House aide Stephen Miller, posted 210 pages of new receipts Thursday from the group's two-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department, which last year revealed USAID's "Disinformation Primer" that spanned the end of President Trump's first term and at least President Biden's early term.

They document "a massive government-backed censorship operation" by USAID, "censorship nerve center" GEC, the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and media watchdogs NewsGuard and Poynter "under the guise" of policing mis-, dis- and mal-information, sometimes jeered as "true but inconvenient," AFL said in a lengthy X thread on the revelations.

All of the documents highlighted by AFL appear to be between the 2020 election and President Biden's early term.

It's not the only FOIA hound on State's tail, with the Functional Government Initiative having filed a suit earlier this year against the agency for withholding records on GEC and White House discussions on the European Union's anti-disinformation Digital Services Act and internal press guidance on how to discredit a GOP congressman and journalists reporting on GEC's funding of disinfo cops.

"Wow, this is crazy!" Department of Government Efficiency cheerleader Elon Musk, whose authority in the renamed U.S. Digital Service is disputed, wrote in sharing AFL's thread.

The State Department acknowledged a Just the News query but did not provide a response to AFL's assertions based on the FOIA production by deadline Thursday.

The first document is a Dec. 12, 2020, email that AFL portrays as contradicting USAID's stated mission of foreign disaster recovery, poverty alleviation and "democratic reforms."

An unidentified GEC "liaison planner to USAID" reached out to at least six USAID entities, whose email handles refer to digital development, Asia outreach, Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization policy and Africa, "Asia Bureau ES taskers" and "TF 2020-COVID 19," apparently its first-year COVID task force.

The email shares GEC's COVID "propaganda and disinformation products" for that week and asks what they're seeing in the way of "adversary narratives" and what they are doing to "mitigate and counter adversarial attempts to exploit COVID-19 for their own propaganda and disinformation purposes."

Two of the products that week: "GEC Vaccine Briefing" and "GEC First Look Political and COVID-19 Disinformation Narratives Surrounding the 2020 Presidential Elections in Moldova."

A Jan. 8, 2021, email from the GEC "Counter Terrorism Operations Manager" to several recipients with State addresses appears to be forwarding a Middle East Media Research Institute "Domestic Terrorism Threat Monitor" newsletter.

"Not sure who is covering REMVE [racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism], but we should include the highlighted sections below for the Ops Report," it says. "[Redacted] let's make sure to have a section that captures VEOs [violent extremist organizations] responses to Wednesday."

The forwarded email includes several U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office addresses as well as State addresses. AFL described the newsletter reports from Italy, Poland, Ukraine and Russia, among others, as State sharing "malinformation" with FDCO, three of which refer to the fatally shot Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt.

Another section of emails adds to well-trod territory involving news-rating service NewsGuard and GEC, which hired Park Advisors to create Disinfo Cloud, through which taxpayer money was funneled to NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index.

Just the News covered NewsGuard and the fear it strikes in U.S. conservative media, which are vulnerable to advertising boycotts based on NewsGuard's "nutrition labels" that supposedly rate trustworthiness, as part of a four-part series on watchdogs that promote censorship. GDI lost National Endowment for Democracy grants for similar targeting of U.S. media.

The House Small Business Committee found GEC gave $6 million to Park Advisors, founded by State alum Christina Nemr, who got more federal funding after GEC "retired" Disinfo Cloud and she rebranded the platform as Becera.

NewsGuard General Manager Matt Skibinski pitched its services to Nemr, State, the Defense Department's National Security Innovation Network, U.S. Cyber Command and the U.S. Army European Command two days after the 2020 election.

He attached "our sample of Fingerprints," referring to a GEC-Cyber Command "testbed pilot" that uses "artificial intelligence and machine learning to monitor 'misinformation,'" AFL said.

This should be understood in the context of the House Small Business report, according to AFL. "There was no firewall in place to ensure that Federal resources were not being used to develop and promote technologies that would have domestic impacts" in addition to moderating foreign speech, the report said.

Two weeks into the Biden administration, Institute for War and Peace Reporting Senior Program Manager Vonda Wolcott connected three "Poynter folks" – one of whom is redacted under an exemption for "personnel and medical files and similar files" – with GEC's monitoring and evaluation expert.

That person "has kindly offered to walk you through the GEC's new M&E workbook" which "uses the M&E from your GEC-approved proposals," Wolcott wrote. AFL says Poynter funds a "global false-flag operation" of nominally independent fact-checkers who are actually "a tightly woven network funded by Poynter and the GEC," citing earlier litigation discoveries.

"Thankfully, the GEC is shuttered and USAID is being exposed – but lawmakers should take note of this example as they consider legislation to ensure the federal government actually serves American principles and interests,” AFL senior counsel Andrew Block said.