New Documents Reveal Taxpayer Cash Used to Silence Trump Messaging, Conservatives

Newly released documents show that the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a foreign-based nonprofit that received U.S. taxpayer funding, reported directly to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) about efforts that significantly reduced advertising revenue for conservative news sites and limited the digital reach of President Donald Trump’s messages.

The memos, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by government watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust, reveal that GDI used U.S. government grants—intended to combat foreign disinformation—to instead influence domestic online content and advertising practices.

The reports submitted to the NED explicitly boasted about the organization’s impact on U.S. media and political narratives.

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According to GDI’s own quarterly progress reports, the group actively encouraged advertisers to pull support from what it labeled as “high-risk disinformation sites,” a tactic that it described as “demonetization.”

This effort, in coordination with an unnamed ad tech analytics partner, reportedly resulted in a reduction of advertising bids by 50% to roughly 1,200 media sites over a 15-month period between March 2020 and September 2021.

The estimated financial loss to these outlets totaled around $100 million.

Though the GDI memos did not name individual websites in that section, the group has publicly identified 10 “highest-risk” U.S. news sites in other reports.

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Nearly all of them are conservative-leaning, including The New York Post, The Daily Wire, Newsmax, The Federalist, and The Blaze. Simultaneously, the GDI identified left-leaning outlets like NPR, The New York Times, and ProPublica as “minimum-risk” platforms.

“The Censorship Industrial Complex was hard at work early in this decade, and they were using taxpayer dollars to do so,” said Michael Chamberlain, Director of Protect the Public’s Trust.

“They effectively gave funding to GDI to look at disinformation, misinformation in foreign countries, such as countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America—Nigeria, India, Malaysia, Mexico are mentioned specifically in the grant application.”

The NED, which is funded by the U.S. Congress, stated in February 2023 that it had severed ties with GDI after learning the organization was involved in targeting U.S.-based media, which the NED said was being funded by “a different donor.”

However, the newly uncovered memos show that GDI reported its work on American media directly in the progress updates sent to the NED.

Among the examples highlighted by GDI was the suppression of Trump’s social media reach following his deplatforming in January 2021.

The group cited a front-page article in The New York Times that referenced GDI’s research on the “dramatic drop in reach of Trump’s statements once the bullhorn of the social media algorithms was removed.”

Mike Benz, founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online and a former State Department official, criticized the findings.

“I am absolutely disgusted by these revelations, as should be every American and every world citizen to see the U.S. government, under the Biden administration, actively funding a full-out campaign to pressure advertisers to defund private independent news sites who competed with the Biden State Department’s media narratives,” Benz said.

This story, when its implications are fully understood, should be the end of NED. I’ll be discussing it in deeper detail this week. Every independent news site targeted by advertisers should be demanding NED be disbanded entirely. https://t.co/eXSJLNNGOF pic.twitter.com/665fgffcRj

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) May 19, 2025

GDI’s grant proposal to the NED initially claimed the organization would focus its disinformation work abroad.

It referenced countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, India, Malaysia, and Mexico.

GDI also claimed to have influenced national press guidelines in South Africa through similar methods.

The documents show that one key metric for GDI’s “success” was how much advertising was removed from platforms it labeled as disinformation outlets.

Its “Dynamic Exclusion List” was circulated to major ad tech platforms and brands to pressure them to cease ad placements on certain websites.

GDI also received funding from the U.S. State Department’s now-disbanded Global Engagement Center.

In 2022, controversy over U.S. censorship efforts led to the collapse of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, which was temporarily led by Nina Jankowicz. Jankowicz publicly dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation,” despite later confirmations of its authenticity.

Investigative journalist Matt Taibbi and other independent reporters have documented extensive coordination between federal agencies and social media platforms to suppress political speech that challenged mainstream narratives during the 2020 election and beyond.

Reason Magazine previously highlighted Jankowicz’s congressional testimony, in which she rejected the widely accepted explanation that Hunter Biden left his laptop at a repair shop, instead calling it a “fairy tale.”

Jankowicz later resigned following backlash over a viral video in which she sang a parody song about disinformation.

The newly released GDI reports add to growing concerns about government involvement in content moderation and the targeting of political speech, particularly against conservative voices.

Critics argue the findings reveal not only misuse of taxpayer dollars but also an alarming pattern of ideologically motivated censorship coordinated with federal support.

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