‘Disinformation’ group blacklisting conservative news pressed by Ken Buck over hiding tax forms
Gabe Kaminsky
Video Embed
EXCLUSIVE — Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) is demanding answers from one of the leaders of the Global Disinformation Index, a British entity blacklisting conservative media outlets, after the Washington Examiner revealed that its two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups are hiding key information about their operations from the public.
The private AN Foundation, also known as the Disinformation Index Foundation, and its affiliated public charity, Disinformation Index Inc., cited an obscure federal exemption law on “harassment” as part of its decision to provide the Washington Examiner with copies of its 2021 tax forms that omit officers, board members, and the source of a donation. Buck, who in March pressed the State Department over its grants to the conservative blacklist network, is calling on GDI co-founder and CEO Clare Melford to release a “complete and unredacted list of donors” for both American entities.
‘DISINFORMATION’ NETWORK BLACKLISTING CONSERVATIVE NEWS HIDES TAX FORMS OVER ‘HARASSMENT’
“News reports allege that in IRS tax filings, both the Disinformation Index Foundation and the public charity Disinformation Index Inc., redacted the names of their biggest donors, hiding their main sources of funding from public view,” Buck wrote in a letter on Tuesday to Melford.
iFrame Object
“This deprives interested parties of valuable information regarding ideological leanings and potential conflicts of interest,” Buck, who sits on the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees, also wrote in his letter. “Most importantly, American taxpayers (who provided funding for your organization) are kept in the dark. American taxpayers have the right to know the makeup of organizations that impinge upon their free speech.”
GDI has come under fire following a Washington Examiner report on Feb. 9 that detailed its secret operation feeding blacklists of conservative websites to advertisers with the intent of shutting down disfavored speech. Buck, who is among several Republican lawmakers who have raised concerns over the issue, sent a list of written questions on March 8 to the State Department, which along with the government-backed National Endowment for Democracy, granted roughly $665,000 between 2020 and 2021 to GDI. The NED announced in late February that it would no longer fund GDI in the future.
“As I wrote to Secretary Blinken in March, U.S. taxpayers should not provide funding for international organizations focused on blacklisting and targeting right-leaning American news organizations. However, the Global Disinformation Index has in the past chosen to accept and request U.S. funding from the State Department, therefore I believe that U.S. taxpayers deserve full transparency from GDI regarding information about who else has funded their efforts to silence conservative speech,” Buck told the Washington Examiner.
Melford, as well as GDI co-founder and Executive Director Danny Rogers, are listed in Delaware corporate records interchangeably as board members and officers for the two nonprofit groups, the Washington Examiner found. The AN Foundation notably omitted on tax forms who contributed $115,000 to the group in 2021, despite IRS law typically requiring private entities like it to disclose such details. Public charities, like Disinformation Index, are not required to provide the public with the names of contributors.
The charity, which hauled in $1.1 million in revenue in 2021, and the private foundation, which posted $367,000 in revenue that year, also redacted who prepared their tax forms and who their books are in the care of. A lawyer for GDI claimed in an April 6 letter to the Washington Examiner that both GDI groups are “withholding” details from their disclosures due to federal laws on “harassment” campaigns against tax-exempt entities.
“The Index’s personnel and their families have received multiple threats and hacking attacks, including threats of violence against their children,” Marcus Owens, who directed the Exempt Organizations division at the IRS between 1990 and 2000, wrote in the letter. “As such, the organization is working [with] appropriate law enforcement authorities, telecommunications and Internet organizations; has appropriately withheld information that could lead to furtherance of this behavior.”
Still, multiple tax experts say that the federal harassment exemption does not permit groups to redact or omit details on their disclosures. Further, the exemption specifically allows groups to not provide their tax forms at all, and typically relates to a “coordinated” campaign in which there are hundreds, if not thousands, of entities requesting tax forms from a given group, according to experts.
It’s unclear whether the IRS has formally approved the GDI groups for the exemption. A spokesperson for the agency previously told the Washington Examiner that it cannot comment on “specific taxpayer situations” and “does not issue rulings through the media about matters of tax law.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 990 that excludes the names of officers and directors,” Alan Dye, a partner at Webster, Chamberlain, & Bean who has specialized in nonprofit law since 1975, previously told the Washington Examiner. “And I’ve looked at hundreds.”
In his letter, Buck asked Melford for a “full explanation of the reasoning behind redacted donor information and the individuals responsible for making such a determination.” The congressman is also seeking a commitment that the GDI groups will release “unredacted information to the IRS as long as your organizations receive U.S. federal funding.”
GDI’s lack of transparency on its disclosures comes amid its own demands for the same from media outlets. It has alleged that some news companies have “opaque ownership structures” that make it difficult for the public to track conflicts of interest on a financial and editorial level, a December 2022 report shows.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The group, for instance, labeled the New York Post as “high-risk” due to the outlet’s purported “lack of transparency around operational policies and practices,” according to an October 2022 report.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the Global Disinformation Index for comment.