EXCLUSIVE — A watchdog group is investigating the State Department over its crafting of an internal memo reportedly used to try to discredit reporting on its ties to activists accused of censoring conservative media outlets, documents show.
Functional Government Initiative, a group “dedicated to improving the American public’s awareness about the officials, decisions, and priorities of their government,” opened the investigation into the State Department this week.
The transparency organization sent a Freedom of Information Act request on Monday to the agency that asked for a copy of internal press guidance that the New York Post reported in September was circulated to counter reports by the Washington Examiner and “Twitter Files” journalist Matt Taibbi on the State Department’s Global Engagement Center being linked to efforts to fight alleged “disinformation” in the United States.
The watchdog group also requested all emails and messages between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top State Department officials since January 2023 involving the Washington Examiner and a British group called the Global Disinformation Index — as well as keywords such as “Matt Taibbi,” “Gabe Kaminsky,” and the “National Endowment for Democracy.” The Washington Examiner reported in February 2023 that the GEC funded the Global Disinformation Index, a British group pressuring advertisers to defund conservative outlets.
The press guidance was distributed as lawmakers investigated the State Department over its funding to the Global Disinformation Index. Following the New York Post’s story this year, Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) launched his own investigation into the GEC since the memo appeared to try to falsely link the congressman to Russia. That’s because the memo cited a variation of a quote from Banks about the Global Disinformation Index that was first given to the Washington Examiner in order to, according to Banks, give “the impression that I had been speaking with a Russian propaganda outlet.”
“The reporting on the Biden-Harris administration’s censorship clearly struck a nerve at the State Department,” said Pete McGinnis, a Functional Government Initiative spokesman. “Our goal is to discover who was involved in the blacklisting efforts, why are they singling out specific people and outlets, and those named were specifically singled out, and just how high up the chain this memo was guiding their media strategy.”
The National Endowment for Democracy, a State Department-funded group, funded the Global Disinformation Index but cut ties with the British group after multiple Washington Examiner reports. The nonprofit group and the GEC came under fire in a September report from the GOP-led House Small Business Committee over their prior support for the Global Disinformation Index.
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The report found that the GEC and the nonprofit group skirted their mandates to act internationally by funding the Global Disinformation Index. A provision through the annual State Department appropriations bill, which cleared the House and will soon be negotiated in the Senate, aims to prohibit future funding to the GEC over its ties to apparent censorship groups.
The State Department did not return a request for comment.