Biden official grilled by GOP over conservative ‘disinformation’ blacklist group funding

A top Biden administration official was confronted in a congressional hearing by Republicans over the U.S. government funding a “disinformation” group starving conservative media of advertising dollars.

The GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee is considering not reauthorizing the Global Engagement Center, a State Department-housed interagency that a Washington Examiner investigation this year revealed gave $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index. GEC Acting Coordinator Daniel Kimmage faced questioning Wednesday from the panel’s oversight and accountability hearing on the office’s 2021 grant to the Global Disinformation Index, a British think tank feeding blacklists of conservative websites to advertisers to shut down disfavored speech.

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GDI has come under particular “censorship” scrutiny from members of Congress for labeling right-leaning news outlets, including the New York Post, Washington Examiner, Daily Caller, and Reason, as purveyors of “disinformation.” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked Kimmage whether the New York Post “is a source of disinformation.”

“The Global Engagement Center does not do any work domestically and we don’t have any position on any U.S. media outlets at all,” Kimmage said.

“Same with RealClearPolitics? Same with Daily Wire?” Issa asked, referring to other blacklisted outlets.

“We don’t do any work in the U.S. media environment,” replied Kimmage.

“But you did give London-based Global Disinformation Index hundreds of thousands of dollars right?” Issa rebutted. The British group had separately pocketed roughly $860,000 between 2020 and 2022 from the State Department-backed National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit group that later cut ties with GDI.

“Let me be clear about the context here,” Kimmage said. “We had an arrangement with the Global Disinformation Index to do work in six languages other than English for a limited period of time, to look for Russian and People’s Republic of China narratives. It was very specific work. It only went for a few months; it ended at the end of 2021. And that was the beginning and end of our work.”

Issa replied, “OK, you don’t have to get too animated about it. I can tell you there’s some concern there. I just want to dot the eye. Would you say in retrospect it was a mistake to work with them and that they were not, in fact, an index that you would want to use on a go forward basis.”

Kimmage said, “The work that we did with them was entirely in keeping with the GEC’s mission to work against foreign propaganda and disinformation in overseas environments. Six languages other than English, completely outside the United States, no relation to anything else.”

Later in the hearing, the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), re-upped Issa’s discussion of GDI.

“They labeled risky and nonrisky entities,” Mast said. “Whatever the time frame was … the most trustworthy, or not risky, as NPR, Associated Press, the New York Times, Huffington Post, other ones, Wall Street Journal, and the list goes on. But some in that list of not risky I consider to be highly risky.”

“My question goes to third parties, in general,” the congressman continued. “I want to know if there’s an institutional bias for third parties that are hired to do this work because that as one example seems like an institution that has a bias and it’s almost like being double-crossed. They did get our money. Then it was saying, ‘This is risky, this is not risky.'”

Mast added, “But the ones they said were not risky were the ones in real time perpetuating the hospital lie, as an example,” referring to how many legacy news outlets peddled the Hamas-planted falsehood recently that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza.

“So, on our partners, we will never have control over what they do in the future,” Kimmage said. “Just to be absolutely clear, the work you’re referring to—.”

“I will acknowledge that you don’t have control over your third-party partners. … But do you know if any of the third parties to date that you’ve hired were part of the hospital lie, we’ll call it that?” Mast asked.

Kimmage replied, “So let me answer your preceding question on bias. We have a process to select partners. We have an announcement asking for the type of work. We have a panel that reviews the partners. In every statement of work, in every agreement that we make with them, let me read this for the record. … The GEC does not address United States domestic audiences, nor engage in domestic discussions of United States policy.”

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The GEC has continued to say that no taxpayer funds went to GDI’s U.S. blacklisting activities, though Republicans argue money is fungible.

Mast said that the GEC’s mission statement revolves around countering foreign propaganda and disinformation efforts threatening the United States: “So that’s a tough mix there because you’re not supposed to address Americans; you are addressing across the globe.”