WASHINGTON (TNND) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said one of President Donald Trump’s cabinet members was labeled a purveyor of disinformation by an obscure office within the State Department during the Biden administration and had created a dossier of their social media posts.
Rubio did not identify which administration official was subjected to the investigation but said he would turn over the file to them and allow them to make a decision on whether to make it public.
“We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans,” Rubio said during Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting. “And, by the way, I’m not going to say who it is. I’ll leave it up to them. There’s at least one person at this table today who had a dossier in that building of social media posts to identify them as purveyors of disinformation. We have these dossiers. We are going to be turning those over to these individuals.”
Rubio appeared to be referring to the Global Engagement Center, an office created in 2016 to “direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.”
“But just think about that. The Department of State of the United States had set up an office to monitor the social media posts and commentary of American citizens, to identify them as vectors of disinformation,” Rubio said. “When we know that the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency.”
The GEC was shuttered last month amid a reorganization of the State Department and allegations from conservatives of censoring their speech. In announcing its closure, Rubio said the Biden administration had spent millions in taxpayer funds to censor free speech.
“Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving. This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America,” Rubio said in a statement.
The center’s supporters said it played a crucial role in combating foreign disinformation campaigns from adversaries who sought to influence U.S. elections and meddle in foreign affairs around the world. Some of its most recent reports include documenting a multibillion-dollar campaign by China to “construct a global information ecosystem in which is propaganda, censorship and disinformation gain traction” and another about Russia spreading disinformation in Africa.
But it was also subject to intense criticism from conservative lawmakers and Elon Musk, who has taken a high-profile role in the Trump administration, that have framed it as a government-backed office to silence opinions it didn’t agree with.
Musk had accused the center of being the “worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation” and claimed it was a threat to democracy as some of its work was detailed in the release of the Twitter Files after the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO had purchased the platform.
Journalist Matt Taibii wrote in one of the Twitter File stories that the Biden administration had used it to pressure social media companies to censor individuals and news organizations during the pandemic. Taibii has been called to testify before Congress on several occasions on allegations of government censorship of conservative voices and accused multiple government agencies of coordinating or funding programs that suppressed speech.
The center’s connections to organizations that have framed conservative media outlets as purveyors of disinformation has also helped drive GOP skepticism of it and helped lead to its closure.
The government’s role in content moderation online and allegations of suppressing free speech in the wake of the pandemic and 2020 election has been a high-profile issue for congressional Republicans over the last several years and has ramped up during the Trump administration.
“The GEC was initially authorized for the statutory purpose of countering foreign propaganda and disinformation efforts,” Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., said at a hearing about the center last month. “Despite that mandate, for years the GEC instead deployed its shadowy network of grantees and sub-grantees to facilitate the censorship of American voices — especially if those voices were conservative and refused to align with the left-leaning establishment politics. Worst of all, this was being done using U.S. taxpayer dollars — your dollars.”
Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office banning the government from “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen” and directed the attorney general to investigate the Biden administration and recommend “remedial actions.”
