EXCLUSIVE — House Republicans are re-upping their request for the Biden administration to turn over "unredacted" grant records since at least 2019 to shed light on the government's funding of groups targeting conservative speech online.
Chairman Roger Williams (R-TX) of the Small Business Committee and its Oversight Subcommittee Chairwoman Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) demanded the records in June from the State Department's Global Engagement Center, an interagency the Washington Examiner reported granted $100,000 in 2021 to the Global Disinformation Index. But since the center is over a month late in fulfilling the request, Williams and Van Duyne are re-upping it, while telling the government it has "no excuse" for shielding documents, according to a letter sent Monday.
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"As previously mentioned, this committee wishes to understand the use of any Global Engagement Center funding of entities whose actions have resulted in small businesses’ loss of economic opportunities from the freedom of engaging in uncensored speech on online platforms," the Republicans wrote on Monday to GEC special envoy and coordinator James P. Rubin.
Williams and Van Duyne previously set a June 21 deadline for the records and said in the Monday letter that the GEC has failed "to provide staff an update on the status of the response." The pair's initial letter, sent in early June, cited a handful of Washington Examiner stories on how GDI has secretly pressured advertisers to defund conservative websites. GDI was also granted roughly $860,000 between 2020 and 2022 from the National Endowment for Democracy, a government-funded nonprofit group that announced in February it will no longer bankroll the British group.
The Monday request is the latest attempt by congressional Republicans to investigate the federal government for its ties to entities trying to thwart speech online. A U.S. appeals court on June 14 temporarily blocked a separate lower court's preliminary injunction restricting the Biden administration from contacting social media companies to flag instances of alleged "misinformation."
The GOP has raised particular "censorship" concerns following documents being produced in connection to the Freedom of Information Act and the lawsuit Missouri v. Biden — which was brought by GOP attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri and alleges that federal officials unjustly urged companies such as Twitter to remove posts related to COVID-19 and other topics.
The GEC has been the target of numerous congressional investigations this year over its affiliations with "disinformation" and "misinformation" tracking, and is notably up for reauthorization in 2024. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is mulling whether it will reauthorize the interagency, though leaning toward not doing so over its failures to fulfill its duties, according to sources familiar with the matter. Republicans on the committee, led by Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), launched records investigations following Washington Examiner reports on GDI.
In September 2022, the State Department's inspector general released a report finding the GEC failed to vet how foreign entities used taxpayer dollars and didn't adequately thwart foreign threats. The GEC, which launched in 2016 and counted its first head as then-Obama official and now-MSNBC on-air analyst Richard Stengel, says on its website that it aims to lead the government's efforts to "counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations."
The GEC's "disinformation" ties have led to businesses losing revenue and could have First Amendment implications, according to the Small Business Committee, which views the interagency as promoting "censorship by proxy."
In late May, the State Department told Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who has pressed the agency for answers over it supporting GDI, that it "stands by the work of the GEC." House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed the GEC's James Rubin in late April over its alleged coordination with Big Tech and "censorship" of opposing views, the Washington Examiner reported.
Meanwhile, House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans are seeking to obtain a trove of records from the State Department on the GEC's grants in recent years related to purported disinformation tracking.
The panel requested the information in a May letter that, among other items, cited how the GEC in 2021 spent $275,000 to help make a video game called Cat Park, which "inoculates players against real-world disinformation," according to a leaked State Department memo obtained by the conservative group America First Legal and Foundation for Freedom Online, a watchdog group.
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The Global Engagement Center did not return a request for comment.
"The Committee’s request is now more timely than ever," the Republicans wrote in the Monday letter.