The
Trump
administration is shutting down an office focused on battling foreign disinformation from countries such as
China
,
Russia
, and
Iran
, officials told
The New York Times.
Secretary of State
Marco Rubio
put all 40 staffers at the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub on paid leave on Wednesday morning. It’s the initial step to having them fully removed from the department this spring. Last month, the department fired about 80 contractors working at the office
and cut nearly all the contracts related to the office.
The office was following disinformation campaigns by rival powers and terrorist groups.
Some Republican legislators have accused both federal employees
and experts not employed by the government working to track disinformation of trying to suppress the views of right-wing political groups and working with social media companies to take action against them. Russian disinformation is often present in online channels on the far right.
In a statement, Rubio claimed that the office had “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” without backing it up with any evidence.
Former
State Department
official James Rubin, who ran the predecessor to the office during the presidency of
Joe Biden
, told
The Times
that “This amounts to a form of unilateral disarmament in the information warfare Russia and China are conducting all over the world.”
During his time in charge, “no efforts were made inside the United States — only international. All of our efforts were focused on Russian and Chinese operations in
Latin America
,
Europe
, and
Africa
,” he added.
The firings were organized by Darren Beattie, the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy, two officials told
The Times
. Beattie was forced to leave the
White House
during the initial Trump administration following
a CNN report
that he had addressed a white supremacist organization.
Beattie gained entry to the email accounts of both present and past employees involved in combating misinformation, according to two officials cited by the newspaper. These sources mentioned that Beattie examined these emails seeking proof that conservatives were being suppressed.
Two internal documents being circulated within the office predict significant reductions, with one indicating potentially slashing its funding nearly in half for the upcoming fiscal year, and another document proposing the shutdown of 10 embassies and 17 consulates.
The suggested reductions occur as China expands its influence globally and Russia becomes increasingly assertive in disseminating misinformation. During his tenure,
Florida
Senator, Rubio often spoke of the importance of expanding government resources to take on both countries across the globe and online.
The precursor to this office, the Global Engagement Center, was set up in 2011 with the aim of combating terrorist propaganda from organizations like Al-Qaeda and the
Islamic State
. It recently had as many as 125 employees and a $61 million budget.
But conservative groups filed lawsuits against the office, with
Elon Musk
calling the center in 2023 the “worst offender in U.S. government censorship.”
At the time, Rubin told the paper that the office was focusing on “how foreign adversaries, primarily China and Russia, use information operations and malign interference to manipulate world opinion.”
After some House
Republicans
blocked congressional reauthorization of the center last year, then-Secretary of State
Antony Blinken
renewed the efforts by setting up the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub.
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