EXCLUSIVE — A State Department-backed group and a top Republican lawmaker are butting heads over a congressional report that accused the entity of working with “censorship” activists, leading to Congress demanding fresh documents, the Washington Examiner has learned.
The National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit group that receives most of its funding through congressional appropriations, was faulted in a House Small Business Committee report earlier this month for flouting its mandate to work internationally. That is because, in the telling of Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), the panel’s chairman, the NED linked itself to censorious activity in the United States through its funding of the Global Disinformation Index, a British group blacklisting conservative media outlets, and other programs aiming to thwart alleged “disinformation” and “misinformation.”
Committee members argued in the 66-page report that “government agencies are working with the private sector to ensure that certain businesses do not have a fair chance to compete online.” Its release ruffled feathers within the highest levels of the NED, the CEO of which, Damon Wilson, penned a Sept. 18 letter to Williams requesting that the GOP-led panel “correct the record” on its report titled “Instruments and Casualties of the Censorship-Industrial Complex.”
“NED does not and has never sought to censor or hinder free speech, which is enshrined in our Constitution and central to the vitality of our democracy,” Wilson, a former White House and State Department official, wrote in the letter. “NED has not engaged or been engaged by the Executive Branch, companies, their intermediaries, or any other parties to this end.”
The leader of the NED, which sits on roughly $126 million in assets, emphasized how the group cut ties with the Global Disinformation Index after the Washington Examiner reported on the NED funding the entity last year.
“Alerted by a story in the Washington Examiner,” Wilson wrote in the letter, “NED leadership took seriously the concerns raised and our obligation to ensure sound stewardship of American taxpayer dollars.” The CEO insisted that the NED’s funding for the British group was “to analyze media environments in Mexico, Nigeria, India, Malaysia, Colombia, Turkey, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Thailand,” according to a copy of the letter.
“I want to underscore this point: NED has no programming related to information integrity and America’s democracy,” Wilson added in the letter, which came after a Washington Examiner story detailed an NED staffer’s involvement in a fact-checking Google listserv discussing conservative media in the U.S.
Williams, the House Small Business Committee chairman, replied to Wilson in a letter on Thursday, according to a copy obtained by the Washington Examiner. His panel’s report also notably took aim at the State Department’s Global Engagement Center office for funding the Global Disinformation Index and other “censorship” groups.
In the Thursday letter, Williams demanded sets of documents from the NED on its ties to the Google listserv, telling the CEO that the nonprofit group must explain its ties to it.
“Given the NED’s strict international restraints, to which you refer in the letter, the committee hopes you would agree that the use of NED resources to send such an email about a domestic press outlet and evaluating its admission to a private credibility organization is improper and, as the finding states, a violation of the NED’s international restrictions,” Williams wrote in the letter, citing a then-2021 NED official’s discussion of the Daily Caller in the listserv.
To Williams, the CEO mischaracterized how his committee described the NED’s relationship with the Global Disinformation Index. The NED leader alleged that the House Small Business Committee said the NED backed the British group to target domestic media outlets — but lawmakers never made that argument. To Republicans, it is problematic enough for a group such as the Global Disinformation Index to receive any federal funding — which prompted a new Defense Department law last year banning certain funds to the British group, as does a new provision through the annual State Department appropriations bill that cleared the House and will be negotiated in the Senate.
“The report does not allege the funds were used for ‘programming focused on the United States,’” Williams wrote to the CEO.
“The report instead provides evidence that, prior to administering the GDI grants, the NED was aware of the GDI’s work in the United States, as well as impacts the funding may have had domestically,” the lawmaker continued. “This is part of a larger conclusion of the report that no taxpayer dollars should be given to any entity which seeks to demonetize domestic press outlets because of their lawful speech.”
In his letter, Williams asked the NED leader whether his staff “ever submitted social media posts or accounts to social media companies in the context of flagging them as potentially violative of terms of service or similar policies.”
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The back-and-forth between Williams and Wilson, captured in the sets of letters, comes on the heels of the New York Post reporting on internal State Department press guidance that, according to the outlet, was used in 2023 to “discredit” the Washington Examiner, journalist Matt Taibbi, and a Republican congressman over coverage of state-funded groups aiming to suppress speech.
“By smearing anyone who disagrees with it as a Russian stooge, this network conflates U.S. citizens with a U.S. adversary, as State Department talking points did to my colleague Representative Jim Banks and the award-winning journalists Gabe Kaminsky and Matt Taibbi in a scheming sleight of hand that ruled out of bounds political opinions and fact-based reporting it opposed but cannot refute,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) wrote in a letter this week to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the revelation.