Rubio: I Shut Down The Foreign Disinformation Office Because It Was “Silencing And Censoring Americans”

Via press release from the State Department:

Freedom of speech and expression have been a cornerstone of what it means to be an American citizen. For centuries, the United States served as a beacon of hope for millions of people around the world. Over the last decade though, individuals in America have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions.

That is not an America our Founding Fathers would recognize. It is the responsibility of every government official to continuously work to preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech.

That is why today I am announcing the closure of the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI), formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC).

Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.

This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America.

That ends today. Under the administration of President Trump, we will always work to protect the rights of the American people, and this is an important step in continuing to fulfill that commitment.

From Rubio’s new Federalist essay:

In 2020, a coronavirus from a Chinese lab swept the globe, and GEC popped up with a report warning that a “Russian disinformation apparatus” was behind public speculation that the virus was an “engineered bioweapon” or that it existed due to “research conducted at the Wuhan institute.” GEC tarred not only specific claims as foreign propaganda but also specific users.

GEC was an enthusiastic participant in the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), an infamous group established under constitutionally questionable conditions to monitor “disinformation” about the 2020 election. The EIP pretty much exclusively singled out accounts and narratives associated with President Trump and his supporters and, in fact, directly flagged President Trump’s tweets, along with his family members and friends of the administration.

My choice to publish this piece in The Federalist is no coincidence. One recipient of your taxpayer dollars was a British entity called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). GDI once produced a list of the top 10 “riskiest online news outlets” in a direct bid to drive off their ad revenue and put them out of business. Every one of those 10 sites was on the political right, and The Federalist was among them.

Abolishing this office, as was noted here earlier today, gives Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media operatives even freer rein to bombard Americans with propaganda, fake news, and disinformation.

Rubio: To Protect Free Speech, The Censorship-Industrial Complex Must Be Dismantledhttps://t.co/dR0nUIg1dL

— The Federalist (@FDRLST) April 16, 2025