Biden’s State Department supports grant for conservative blacklisting despite disinformation claims.

State Department Defends Grant to Group Blacklisting Conservative Media Outlets

The State Department “stands by” its widely scrutinized grant to a group the Washington Examiner revealed is blacklisting conservative media outlets, according to a letter to Congress.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) demanded an investigation into the State Department’s $100,000 grant in 2021 to the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which has fed conservative website blacklists to advertisers to defund disfavored speech. The agency issued a response to the congressman on Friday, telling him in a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner that it has no regrets over the taxpayer-backed award.

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“It is disappointing but not surprising that the Biden State Department hasn’t come close to offering a suitable explanation or corrective action for its role in the censorship of individual Americans and established conservative media,” Issa told the Washington Examiner. “Make no mistake: Congress isn’t done holding State accountable.”

The GDI has faced criticism from Republican lawmakers for its efforts to thwart purported “disinformation,” with its coordinator James Rubin notably being subpoenaed for “censorship” records in late April by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH). In his March letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Issa wrote that “censoring free speech must stop” and pressed the agency over its grant to the GDI, which also pocketed roughly $860,000 between 2020 to 2022 from the National Endowment for Democracy, a government-funded nonprofit group that announced in mid-February it would no longer fund the blacklist group.

The letter from Issa, who sits on the Judiciary and House Foreign Affairs committees, called on the State Department to “undertake a prompt and comprehensive inquiry into any grants, authorities, and policies” that may have been unlawfully “used to curtail the free expression of conservative and/or domestic media, and to take corrective measures as warranted by the results of such investigation.”

However, the State Department’s Friday response to the congressman made no mention of any ongoing grant review. The response, authored by Naz Durakoglu, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, alleged that “some media outlets have reported that State Department funding may have been used to fund GDI’s work in the United States” and called that “inaccurate,” though it is unclear which news outlets the letter is referring to.

The letter also concedes that Issa’s letter “raises several important points concerning free speech and the principles of democracy, both of which are fundamental to the Department’s representation of U.S. foreign policy and promotion of American ideals abroad.”

As the Washington Examiner has reported since February 2022, the GDI was awarded $100,000 through the government’s U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge, which sought to “advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda across the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom,” according to the Atlantic Council, a think tank that partnered for the challenge.

There is no indication that the $100,000 grant was for GDI’s blacklisting efforts in the U.S. However, Republican lawmakers and watchdog groups have argued that money is “fungible” and have taken aim at the very idea that the State Department would support a group that is also engaged in anti-conservative activity in the U.S.

“The award focused on countering foreign disinformation overseas and, consistent with the GEC’s mission, no domestic-focused activities were included in the scope of work,” Durakoglu wrote in the letter. “Funding under the award could not be used for any other purpose.”

“America’s foreign adversaries and competitors have wielded information manipulation as a tool of statecraft for decades,” Durakoglu added. “The comparatively recent proliferation of global information and communications technology accentuates a contemporary national security risk. The Department stands by the work of the GEC and the crucial role it plays in helping to ensure that foreign disinformation operations do not undermine the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partners.”

Durakoglu’s letter came weeks after the GEC failed to meet a deadline set by the House Foreign Affairs Committee to turn over records related to the GDI and other groups, including the Atlantic Council. The letter also comes as Congress weighs whether in 2024 it will reauthorize the GEC, which hasn’t taken adequate steps to thwart foreign threats and failed to vet how foreign groups used federal dollars, the State Department’s inspector general said in September 2022.

“The Global Engagement Center is making no case for its survival, and the State Department is making a strong case it should be canceled altogether,” a source close to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and familiar with its thinking, told the Washington Examiner. “Because it cannot be trusted to act in the nation’s interest.”

A second source close to the House Foreign Affairs Committee told the Washington Examiner that the body is “not in subpoena territory yet” and will wait to see what records, if any, the State Department produces “before considering.”

Meanwhile, the State Department was sued in May by the right-leaning watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust over the agency’s failure to hand over records on its GDI funding. The GDI’s two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, Disinformation Index and the AN Foundation, were accused in an IRS complaint in May by another right-leaning watchdog called National Legal and Policy Center of violating federal law by redacting their tax forms.

The IRS complaint stemmed from a Washington Examiner report in mid-April that revealed how the two groups were hiding information about their operations by claiming a little-known federal “harassment” exemption law. It’s unclear if the IRS approved the groups for the exemption, though tax experts say it does not allow entities to omit information from their financial disclosures.

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