House Republicans Probe State Department Subsidizing Censorship of Conservatives

Breitbart ^ | 3 May 2023 | SEAN MORAN3

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Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), Foreign Affairs Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee Chair Brian Mast (R-FL), Reps. Chris Smith (R-FL), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Maria Salazar (R-FL), Keith Self (R-TX), Cory Mills (R-FL), and Ken Buck (R-CO) mentioned that the committee would postpone reauthorizing the Global Engagement Center (GEC) as Republicans have accused the State Department subagency of funding censorship.

The lawmakers accused the GEC of mission creep, expanding well beyond its primary mission of fighting terrorism to funding groups that hound conservative media outlets under the guise of diminishing disinformation.

“The GEC’s founding mission, effectively, was to provide a ready resource for the truth about America and our fight against global terror, particularly ISIS,” the Foreign Affairs Republicans wrote.

“[But now we] are forced to wonder about the authority by which the GEC justifies its mission creep, and the direction of its current evolutionary trajectory,” the lawmakers added. “Congress originally authorized the GEC to ‘support the development and dissemination of fact-based narratives and analysis to counter propaganda and disinformation directed at the United States and United States allies and partner nations.’”

“While the GEC performs some unquestionably important work, it has also provided social media companies with access to tech applications that ‘detect and either knock down or flag malign-foreign-influence activity,’ but, according to the FBI, also ‘might accidentally pick up U.S. people[‘s] information,'” the lawmakers continued.

The House Foreign Affairs Republicans noted that the GEC funded the Global Disinformation Index, a foreign data-driven advocacy organization, which “created blacklists of U.S. domestic media voices to cripple U.S. citizen journalists’ advertising revenue.”

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