On Wednesday, U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard announced major staff reductions and reforms designed save taxpayer money and end the political weaponization of the Biden-created Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC).
In addition to cutting 40% of the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) staff, Gabbard’s initiative will significantly downsize FMIC – and eliminate its most-abused authorities, which were weaponized against conservatives’ free speech and used to attack the 2024 reelection bid of President Donald Trump.
Gabbard detailed some of FMIC’s most egregious abuses of power uncovered under her leadership in a statement:
“FMIC and its predecessor entities were used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition.
“ODNI uncovered evidence of a multi-year relationship between FMIC and social media companies that was not based on scientific or objective metrics and may have been used to weaponize intelligence against Americans, undermining civil liberties.”
Gabbard noted how FMIC used the pretense of Russian misinformation in order to rationalize censorship and discredit the authentic Hunter Biden Laptop news that reflected poorly on Democrat Joe Biden:
“For example, shortly before Twitter (now known as ‘X’) removed the New York Post’s October 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story from its platform, FMIC (then the Election Threats Executive) had coordinated with the company, and other Big Tech platforms like Facebook and Google, on their responses to the story — all under the guise of combating foreign influence activities.”
FMIC also advanced the now thoroughly-debunked Trump-Russia Hoax in order to help Joe Biden and disparage Trump, Gabbard explained:
“ODNI’s hyper-focus on election-related work notably began in 2017, immediately following the publication of the manufactured Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) falsely alleging Putin ‘aspired’ to help President Trump win the 2016 election.”
Leftist national legacy media eagerly regurgitated the narrative that Russia tried to hurt Democrats and help Trump, as CBS did in its August 26, 2021 coverage of the Biden Administration’s creation of the Federal Malign Influence Center:
“The [unnamed] official said that plans for the center arose in response to congressional demands and in light of ‘evolving threats.’
“[A]t President Vladimir Putin’s direction, in 2016 waged a sweeping, multiprong campaign designed to denigrate the candidacy of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and boost the chances of then-candidate Donald Trump. Moscow again targeted the U.S. midterm elections in 2018 and the 2020 presidential election, according to statements and assessments from U.S. intelligence officials.”
On Wednesday, however, The Tampa Free Press noted that the FMIC prompted social media platforms to suppress both the Hunter Biden Laptop story and intelligence suggesting that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory:
“The FMIC, in particular, was found to have worked with major social media companies to suppress news stories related to Hunter Biden’s laptop, according to an ODNI fact sheet. The NCBC was also cited for downplaying intelligence suggesting a lab origin for the COVID-19 pandemic.”
DNI Gabbard’s declassification of internal documents also shed light on FMIC’s cover-up censorship of the Hunter Biden story and its Trump-Russia collusion propaganda, Breitbart reported Wednesday:
“The FMIC, which houses the Election Threats Executive (ETE), coordinated with Big Tech companies including Twitter (now X) and Facebook shortly before the former removed the New York Post’s October 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story from its platform, officials said.
“‘Departments and agencies left to their own devices will create things like the Russia hoax,’ one official said, referring to Gabbard’s recent declassification of documents revealing that the Obama administration orchestrated the narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.”
Because FMIC was created by Congress, DNI Gabbard is not able to eliminate the Center. So, she is doing the next best thing: reducing its size and transferring its powers that have been weaponized.
The tentacles of the Biden Administration’s censorship apparatus continue to reach far beyond FMIC’s handling of the Hunter Biden Laptop and COVID-19 issues, however.
In order to provide a road map for Trump Administration cabinet secretaries and agency heads working to root out and end government censorship, the Media Research Center’s (MRC) Free Speech America has produced a comprehensive report on Biden’s 57 censorship initiatives extending across 93 federal agencies.
“The greatest threat to our country, to our freedoms to our liberties, to our representative democracy over the last four years is Joe Biden and his massive censorship cartel,” MRC Vice President of Free Speech America Dan Schneider said, announcing publication of the report. “It was unprecedented and few people really appreciate how devastating it was to us as human beings and as Americans,” Schneider said, emphasizing the importance of the report:
“We here at the Media Research Center have generated a report that shows the 57 unique and separate censorship initiatives from the Joe Biden Administration. It’s a dizzying report covering over 90 federal agencies.”
Free Speech America’s Schneider introduces the report, “The Biden Administration Waged War on Free Speech with 57 Censorship,” in the video below.
Read the full report here.
