Rep. Jim Banks wants the State Department to explain a “sloppy and hypocritical lie” its press office told about him spreading Russian “disinformation,” — when State was signing off on grants that “promoted the censorship of American citizens,” according to a copy of a letter exclusively obtained by The Post.
Banks (R-Ind.) raised his concerns in the Monday missive to Secretary of State Antony Blinken after a bombshell Post report on leaked internal State Department documents revealed US government spokespeople were seeking to discredit Banks and two journalists who disclosed the grant funding.
“The State Department, in defense of its domestic so-called ‘disinformation’ operation, purposefully spread disinformation about a U.S. [sic] lawmaker,” Banks told Blinken. “This is a sloppy and hypocritical lie and it is typical of the Biden-Harris State Department’s repeated attacks on the First Amendment and Americans’ free speech rights.”
“Twitter Files” journalist Matt Taibbi and Washington Examiner investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky pulled back the curtain on the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) in a series of reports last year.
While purportedly “focused on countering foreign disinformation overseas,” GEC pressured social media companies to censor Americans’ speech and funneled taxpayer dollars to international organizations like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which blacklisted The Post and other outlets with conservative- or libertarian-leaning opinion sections that allegedly spread “disinformation.”
GDI forwarded its “blacklist” of outlets — which included Newsmax, the American Conservative, Reason, the Daily Wire and RealClearPolitics — to ad companies in an effort to deplatform them.
Both Taibbi and Kaminsky were faulted in the State Department press guidance for having not used proper channels to request comment or further information about GEC operations and funding, while Banks was cited inaccurately as having provided comment to a Russian state-controlled media outlet.
“Does the State Department believe that the Washington Examiner, New York Post, and other outlets on the GDI’s list are guilty of ‘disinformation’?” the Indiana Republican asked Blinken in his letter, before chiding: “Does the State Department review its own press guidance for misinformation or disinformation?”
GEC signed off on a $100,000 grant to GDI between October 2021 and March 2022. Another $756,923 was approved through a government-funded grant from the National Endowment for Democracy to GDI between 2020 and 2023.
The House Small Business Committee released a report last week that detailed the grants and showed GEC’s private support for GDI as it interacted with various US tech companies.
Banks requested explanations by Oct. 1 of the decisions that led to the misleading press guidance.
“I have been personally sanctioned by Russia, but this is the second time this year the Biden-Harris administration or its proxies have falsely accused me of boosting Russian propaganda,” he told The Post. “They always fall back on that smear when you criticize their censorship of American citizens, so I’ll take it as a compliment. Congress must defund the Global Engagement Center.”
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
