A previously unreported document distributed by snr US #State Dept ofcl #DarrenBeattie reveals a sweeping effort to uncover all communications between the staff of a small govt office focused on #online #disinformation & a lengthy list of #public & #private figures—many of whom are longtime targets of the #FarRight.

#law #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #FreePress #privacy #InfoSec #democracy #RevengePolitics #Trump

The document also seeks all staff communications that merely reference #Trump or people in his orbit, like #AlexJones, #GlennGreenwald, & #RFKJr. In addition, it directs a search of communications for a long list of keywords, including “Pepe the Frog,” “incel,” “q-anon,” “Black Lives Matter,” “great replacement theory,” “far-right,” & “infodemic.”

#law #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #FreePress #privacy #InfoSec #democracy #RevengePolitics

For several people who received or saw the document, the broad requests for unredacted information felt like a “witch hunt,”…one that could put the #privacy & #security of numerous individuals & organizations at risk.

Beattie, whom #Trump appointed in Feb to be the acting undersecretary for #public #diplomacy, told #State Dept ofcls that his goal…was a “#TwitterFiles” like release of internal State Dept documents “to rebuild trust with the American public”….

#law #RevengePolitics

The document, dated March 11, 2025, focuses specifically on records & communications from the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation & Interference (R/FIMI) Hub, a small office in the #State Dept’s Office of Public Diplomacy that tracked & countered foreign #disinformation campaigns; it was created after the Global Engagement Center (#GEC), which had the same mission, shut down at the end of 2024. #MIT Technology Review broke the news earlier this month that R/FIMI would be shuttered.

#Trump

When told of their inclusion in the records request, multiple people expressed alarm that such a list exists at all in an American institution. “When I was in government I’d never [have] done anything like that,” #BillKristol, a fmr chief of staff to VP Dan Quayle, says. “What would be the innocent reason for doing that?”

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#DanielFried echoes this sentiment. “I spent 40 years in the #State Dept, & you didn’t collect names or demand email records…I’ve never heard of such a thing”—at least not in the American context, he clarifies. It did remind him of Eastern European “Communist Party minder[s] watching over the untrusted bureaucracy.”

He adds: “It also approaches the compilation of an #EnemiesList.”

#Trump #law #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #FreePress #privacy #InfoSec #democracy #RevengePolitics

Both #GEC & #RFIMI, its pared-down successor office, focused on tracking & countering foreign #disinformation efforts from #Russia, #China, & #Iran, among others, but GEC was frequently accused—& was even sued—by *#conservative* critics who claimed that it enabled *censorship* of conservative Americans’ views. A judge threw out one of those claims against GEC in 2022 (while finding that other parts of the Biden admin did exert undue pressure on tech platforms).

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#DarrenBeattie has also personally promoted these views. Before joining the #State Dept, he started Revolver News, a website that espouses #FarRight talking points that often gain traction in certain *conservative* circles. Among the ideas promoted in Revolver News is that GEC was part of a “censorship industrial complex” aimed at suppressing American #conservative voices, even though GEC’s mission was foreign #disinformation.

#ConspiracyTheories #law #Trump #privacy #InfoSec #RevengePolitics

This idea has taken hold more broadly; the [#Republican controlled] #House Foreign Affairs Cmte held a hearing titled the “Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Need for First Amendment Safeguards at the State Department,” on April 1 focused on GEC.

#ConspiracyTheories #law #Trump #privacy #InfoSec #RevengePolitics

Most people on the list appear to have focused at some point on tracking or challenging #disinformation broadly, or on countering specific false claims, including those related to the #2020election. A few of the individuals appear primarily to be critics of #Trump, #DarrenBeattie or others in the #RightWing #media ecosystem. Many have been the subject of Trump’s public #grievances for years.

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#DarrenBeattie specifically asked for “all documents, emails, correspondence, or other records of communications amongst/between employees, contractors, subcontractors or consultants at the GEC or R/FIMI” since 2017 with all the named individuals, as well as communications that merely referenced them. He sought communications that referenced any of the listed organizations.

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Finally, he sought a list of additional #unredacted agency records—including all GEC #grants & #contracts, as well as subgrants, which are particularly sensitive due to risks of #retaliation to subgrantees, who often work in local #journalism, #FactChecking, or pro-#democracy orgs under repressive regimes. It also asked for “all documents mentioning” the #ElectionIntegrity Partnership, a #research collaboration between #academics & #tech that has been a target of the #RightWing.

#law #Trump

Several #State Dept staffers call the records requests “unusual” & “improper” in their scope.…

While they acknowledge that previous political appointees have, on occasion, made information requests through the records management system, #DarrenBeattie’s request was something wholly different.

Never had “an incoming political appointee” sought to “search through 7 years’ worth of all staff emails to see whether anything negative had been said about his friends,” says one staffer.

#law #Trump

#DarrenBeattie delivered the request, which he framed as a “transparency” initiative, to the #State Dept ofcls in a conference room at its Washington, DC, HQ on a Tues afternoon in early March, in the form of an 11-pg packet titled, “SO [Senior Official] Beattie Inquiry for GEC/R/FIMI Records.” The documents were printed out, rather than emailed.

Labeled “sensitive but unclassified,” the document lays out Beattie’s requests in 12 separate, but sometimes repetitive, bullet points.

#law #Trump

In total, he sought communications about 16 organizations, including #Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center & DHS’s’s #Cybersecurity & Infrastructure #Security Agency (#CISA), as well as…about 39 individuals.

Notably, this includes several #journalists: In addition to #Bellingcat & #AnneApplebaum, the document also asks for communications w/ #NBCNews senior reporter #BrandyZadrozny.

#ConspiracyTheories #law #Trump #privacy #InfoSec #RevengePolitics #FirstAmendment #democracy