EXCLUSIVE — A State Department-backed “disinformation” tracker under congressional investigation is shielding key details about its operations from the Washington Examiner despite blacklisting conservative media outlets for having “opaque ownership structures.”
The Global Disinformation Index has faced heightened scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over the British group’s covert efforts to defund websites it disagrees with, and it is also at the center of a new lawsuit against the State Department over the agency wiring $100,000 to GDI. While GDI brands itself as a “nonpartisan” proponent of transparency, that didn’t stop its two affiliated nonprofit groups in the United States from providing the Washington Examiner with heavily redacted copies of their newly filed 2022 financial disclosures, a maneuver tax experts warn likely violates federal law.
‘Transparency in the media’
GDI’s transparency flop further underscores how the purported disinformation tracker hardly practices what it preaches, a fact that has, in part, propelled House Republicans to weigh subpoenaing the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which granted $100,000 to GDI in 2021. GDI, which has come under fire for broadly labeling conservative outlets as “disinformation” and celebrating liberal outlets that have published certain false or debunked stories, feeds a “dynamic exclusion list” to advertisers each month in order to strip revenue from websites that lean right. GDI said in a December 2022 report that it rates websites based on “conflicts of interests that can arise from opaque ownership structures” and rebuked the New York Post for “its lack of transparency around operational policies and practices.”
“The Global Disinformation Index is violating the law by hiding its disclosures, and that’s pretty funny and hypocritical for a group that pretends it cares about transparency in the media,” conservative lawyer Mike Davis, who leads the Internet Accountability Project, a group seeking to rein in the power of Big Tech social media platforms, told the Washington Examiner.
GDI does not publicize its “dynamic exclusion list,” and it has repeatedly not replied to requests for this document. Microsoft and Oracle previously subscribed to the list but stopped after reports from the Washington Examiner on GDI’s erroneous determinations of what constitutes “disinformation.” For instance, GDI flagged an opinion article in the Washington Examiner that focused on a study finding liberals are less “satisfied” with their lives as a form of “disinformation” and seemingly pressured the France-based company Criteo to stop placing ads in the outlet.
In mid-November of last year, the Washington Examiner requested 2022 tax filings from lawyer Marcus Owens for GDI’s U.S. groups, the Disinformation Index Inc., a charity, and the private AN Foundation, which GDI recently said on its website is “no longer a legal entity.” Owens, a former top IRS official, instructed the Washington Examiner in mid-December to mail a $15 check to the charity in San Antonio, Texas, for GDI’s tax filings.
In turn, the tax filings that GDI mailed from Texas to the Washington Examiner included redactions for key pieces of information about GDI, such as its board members and who prepared the documents. The hiccup shows why lawmakers have a responsibility to investigate GDI further, including the State Department-funded blacklister’s covert operations, said two senior congressional aides, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
It’s a particularly unusual and likely illegal maneuver, given both the AN Foundation and Disinformation Index Inc.’s tax filings can be viewed on ProPublica, said Patrick Sternal, a nonprofit group lawyer who used to work for the IRS.
The charity and ex-private foundation share a president in Danny Rogers and secretary in Clare Melford, GDI’s CEO, according to tax filings.
And in 2022, the charity’s revenue soared to $2.8 million, up from $1.1 million in the year prior.
While it’s unclear where all that money came from, a sliver was thanks to Democratic megadonor George Soros, whose left-wing Open Society Institute dished out $150,000 to GDI, according to grant records.
The National Endowment for Democracy, a State Department-funded nonprofit group, granted $315,750 to GDI in 2022. That contribution came after GDI was supported in prior years by NED, which said last February that it will no longer bankroll the blacklister.
‘Harassment’
The NED’s grants to GDI were also cited in a lawsuit filed in December of last year against the Global Engagement Center by the state of Texas, as well as the Daily Wire and the Federalist. The lawsuit named Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as other top State Department officials, who the Lone Star State and the conservative websites said engaged in “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.”
“We will not stop until this entire corrupt edifice has been torn down, brick by brick, and every single person involved has been held accountable,” Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of the Federalist, said in a statement upon the lawsuit being filed.
Like the Daily Wire and the Federalist, RealClearPolitics was flagged by GDI as being an alleged purveyor of “disinformation.” RealClearPolitics Publisher David M. DesRosiers told the Washington Examiner that the State Department-backed group “pushes a gospel of transparency for thee, but not for themselves.”
“It’s completely hypocritical,” DesRosiers said.
GDI similarly redacted its 2021 tax filings upon sending them to the Washington Examiner in early 2023 and alleged it had taken the action at the time due to the U.S. groups claiming a little-known exemption under IRS law for organizations targeted by a coordinated “harassment campaign.”
GDI never provided documentation to the Washington Examiner showing it was actually approved for this exemption.
The conservative National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group then accused GDI in a May 2023 IRS complaint of violating federal law since the “harassment” exemption typically pertains to an instance in which hundreds, if not thousands, of parties are requesting tax filings from groups, which did not appear to be the case.
Moreover, the exemption allows for groups to withhold their filings from requesters altogether, but the rule makes no mention of tax-exempt entities being allowed to redact their filings indiscriminately upon handing them over to the public. GDI’s lawyer did not return requests for comment.
In its prior complaint, the National Legal and Policy Center asked the IRS to investigate whether GDI’s Rogers received “excessive and unreasonable compensation.”
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The watchdog is eyeing another complaint in 2024, said the group’s lawyer Paul Kamenar, who noted that Rogers took home $126,969 in 2022 for working an average of two hours per week for both groups combined.
“His rate is a whopping $1,200 per hour, which is more than pricey Washington, D.C., attorneys,” Kamenar told the Washington Examiner.
