Latest news with #GlobalEngagementCenter
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Trump Official Behind Controversial Russia Move Has Ties to Kremlin
Senior State Department staffer Darren Beattie, a passionate Putin supporter behind the move to dismantle a key agency fighting Russian propaganda, is married to a Russian woman whose uncle is a longtime Kremlin ally, according to The Telegraph. Yulia Kirillova grew up in Moscow, studied abroad in North America, and married Beattie in 2021 in Florida. She moved to D.C. in January. Her uncle Sergei Cherniko is a drinks magnate who had an estimated net worth of $150 million in 2005. That year, he served in Russia's ministry of natural resources and was then deputy governor of Siberia's Nenets region. Cherniko later served in Putin's civic chamber from 2008 to 2010. The relationship raises even greater scrutiny around Beattie's April decision to eliminate the Global Engagement Center, a State Department office tasked with dealing with Russian disinformation campaigns. Beattie has been a staunch supporter of Putin, setting himself apart from the traditional conservative right in Bannon-esque fashion. 'US gov't has been supporting Ukranian neo-nazi groups in its obsessive proxy war against Russia,' he wrote on X in 2022. 'State Department could sell butt plugs and forward proceeds to fund resistance effort in ukraine,' he wrote again that year. 'Iran Contra but with a modern American twist.' 'A big part of American ruling class' hatred of Russia is that Russia is a major power that rejects the woke ideology at the core of American regime,' he wrote in 2021. This is a clear conflict of interest that is extremely typical within the Trump administration. And on top of that, Beattie was initially fired from the Trump administration in 2018 for attending a white nationalist conference. He has a long history of many other deeply problematic views. 'Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,' Beattie wrote on X in October. 'Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.' On January 6, 2021, he spent the day on X warning Senator Tim Scott, 'BLM,' Ibram X. Kendi, and Kay Cole James to 'learn their places' and 'take a knee' to MAGA. That, on top of this personal in at the Kremlin, is highly questionable behavior for a ranking official, which has been overly normalized by this administration.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mixed Signals: Christiane Amanpour and Jamie Rubin on explaining the world — and podcasting with your ex
Christiane Amanpour has been on the front lines of global media since the 80s, while her ex-husband, Jamie Rubin, held top State Department jobs in the Clinton and Biden administrations. Now, with Jamie freshly out of the White House, they've come back together to make a podcast. This week, Ben and Max bring on the divorced couple to talk about why they decided to get into the digital media space now, what the role of media is in shaping foreign affairs, and how the information landscape has changed over their careers. They also talk about Jamie's role in fighting Russian propaganda with the State Department's Global Engagement Center and Christiane's thoughts on the relevance of foreign correspondents in the internet age. Sign up for Semafor Media's Sunday newsletter: For more from , check out Find us on X: @semaforben, @maxwelltani If you have a tip or a comment, please email us mixedsignals@
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump official targeted in Biden-era 'disinformation' dossier still under wraps days after Rubio revelation
The identity of a Trump administration official who was allegedly targeted by the Biden administration's State Department in a "disinformation" dossier remains a mystery nearly two weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed details on the file. Rubio revealed at the most recent Trump administration Cabinet meeting April 30 that an unidentified Trump administration official who was present had been the subject of a State Department dossier detailing alleged promotion of social media "disinformation." Rubio, the State Department and the White House have not yet identified which official the Biden administration targeted. Fox News Digital has reached out repeatedly to the White House regarding the identity of the official, including on Monday, but did not receive replies. When asked for an update on the identity of the Trump official, the State Department directed Fox News Digital to Rubio's April 30 remark, detailing that, "We are going to be turning over these dossiers to the individuals, and they'll decide whether they want to disclose it or not." Rubio Reveals Obscure Biden Administration Office Kept 'Disinformation' Dossier On Trump Official Rubio said during the April 30 Cabinet meeting that a little-known, now-defunct office within the State Department called the Global Engagement Center (GEC) had compiled disinformation dossiers on Americans across the country as part of an effort to "censor" free speech, including an individual who has since joined the Trump administration. Read On The Fox News App "We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans," Rubio said during the meeting. "And, by the way, I'm not going to say who it is. I'll leave it up to them. There's at least one person at this table today who had a dossier in that building of social media posts to identify them as purveyors of disinformation. We have these dossiers. We are going to be turning those over to these individuals." Vice President JD Vance interjected, asking, "Was it me or Elon (Musk)? We can follow up when the media is gone," which drew laughter from the Cabinet. Rubio Overhauling 'Bloated' State Department In Sweeping Reform "But just think about that. The Department of State of the United States had set up an office to monitor the social media posts and commentary of American citizens, to identify them as vectors of disinformation," Rubio continued. "When we know that the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency." Though Rubio did not identify which Trump official the Biden administration kept a dossier on, Elon Musk has previously railed against the Global Engagement Center. "The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEC," Musk posted to X in January 2023. That was more than a year before Musk endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential race and became a fixture of the administration in his temporary role with the Department of Government Efficiency. "They are a threat to our democracy," Musk added. Rubio Announces Closure Of State Department Effort That 'Was Supposed To Be Dead Already' Former President Barack Obama established the Global Engagement Center in 2016 through an executive order aimed at coordinating counterterrorism messaging to foreign nations before it expanded its scope to also include countering foreign propaganda and disinformation, State Department documents show. Conservatives have slammed the office as a political weapon to silence free speech, including Rubio in an April op-ed when he cited a 2020 GEC report claiming that a "Russian disinformation apparatus" was behind public speculation that the coronavirus was an "engineered bioweapon" or was created by "research conducted at the Wuhan institute." In the years following the pandemic, the Department of Energy under the Biden administration and former FBI Director Christopher Wray said evidence indicated that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak, while the Trump administration's CIA reported earlier in 2025 that a lab leak was the likely origin of the virus. Twitter Boss Elon Musk Accuses Government Agency Of Being 'Worst Offender In Us Government Censorship' In 2024, lawmakers did not approve new funding for the office in the National Defense Authorization Act, and it was scheduled to terminate on Dec. 23, 2024. The Biden administration, however, shuffled staffers and rebranded the office. It became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub just days before Trump's inauguration, the New York Post reported in January. Rubio announced in April that the office would officially shutter. "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)," Rubio said in an April 16 statement announcing the office's closure. "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," he wrote. "This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America. That ends today." White House Proposal Axes Un, Nato Funds And Halves State Department Budget Rubio has railed against the office in previous interviews and op-eds, including authoring an opinion piece for the Federalist in April touting that he was dismantling the "censorship-industrial complex" that had gripped agencies such as the State Department. "Over the past half-decade, bodies like GEC, crafted by our own governing ruling class, nearly destroyed America's long free speech history," he wrote in the op-ed. "The enemies of speech had new lingo to justify their authoritarian impulse. It was "disinformation," allegedly pushed by nefarious foreign governments, that was the No. 1 threat to 'our democracy.' To protect 'our democracy,' this 'disinformation' had to be identified and stamped out."Original article source: Trump official targeted in Biden-era 'disinformation' dossier still under wraps days after Rubio revelation
Epoch Times
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Rubio Says Biden State Department Compiled ‘Disinformation' Dossier on Trump Official
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that the State Department under President Joe Biden compiled dossiers on people it accused of spreading disinformation—with at least one of them being a member of President Donald Trump's cabinet. 'We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans,' said Rubio during an April 30 Cabinet meeting at the White House, referring to the Global Engagement Center, which was rebranded as Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference. 'There's at least one person at this table today who had a dossier in that building of social media posts to identify them as purveyors of disinformation,' he said. 'We have these dossiers. We are going to be turning those over to these individuals.' Rubio did not name the person or persons to whom he was referring. Vice President JD Vance jokingly asked if it was himself or Elon Musk, who leads the administration's Department of Government Efficiency and owns social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which critics have accused of spreading disinformation. Rubio said that 'the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency. We're not going to have an office that does that.' The Secretary of State Musk has been critical of the Global Engagement Center. 'The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEC,' Musk Related Stories 4/16/2025 4/9/2025 The Global Engagement Center was created in 2016 'to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests,' according to archived information from the State Department's website. It released The office 'has played an indispensable role in combating Russian and Chinese disinformation. It would unnecessarily undermine U.S. national security if we eliminated this tool,' Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in October in an effort to save the center. In a 2023 However, critics said that the Global Engagement Center targeted those whose views differed from the Biden administration's. In the April Independent journalist Matt Taibbi
Time of India
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Rubio slams Biden admin for secretly tracking Americans' posts as 'disinformation vectors' - The Economic Times Video
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed in a Cabinet meeting that the Biden administration's State Department maintained secret dossiers on Americans accused of spreading disinformation—including a Trump official. Rubio said the Global Engagement Center monitored citizens' social media, labeling them disinformation 'vectors.' He vowed to hand over those files. VP JD Vance joked about being watched, while Rubio emphasized that true transparency and free speech—not censorship—are the best tools against disinformation.
