Taxpayer-Funded, Pro-Censorship Group Still Hasn’t Disclosed Its Leadership

From the Washington Examiner by Gabe Kaminsky:

A State Department-backed “disinformation” tracker under congressional investigation is shielding key details about its operations from the Washington Examiner despite blacklisting conservative media outlets for having “opaque ownership structures.”

 

The Global Disinformation Index has faced heightened scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over the British group’s covert efforts to defund websites it disagrees with, and it is also at the center of a new lawsuit against the State Department over the agency wiring $100,000 to GDI. While GDI brands itself as a “nonpartisan” proponent of transparency, that didn’t stop its two affiliated nonprofit groups in the United States from providing the Washington Examiner with heavily redacted copies of their newly filed 2022 financial disclosures, a maneuver tax experts warn likely violates federal law.

Also from the article:

The conservative National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group then accused GDI in a May 2023 IRS complaint of violating federal law since the “harassment” exemption typically pertains to an instance in which hundreds, if not thousands, of parties are requesting tax filings from groups, which did not appear to be the case.

 

Moreover, the exemption allows for groups to withhold their filings from requesters altogether, but the rule makes no mention of tax-exempt entities being allowed to redact their filings indiscriminately upon handing them over to the public. GDI’s lawyer did not return requests for comment.

 

In its prior complaint, the National Legal and Policy Center asked the IRS to investigate whether GDI’s Rogers received “excessive and unreasonable compensation.”

 

The watchdog is eyeing another complaint in 2024, said the group’s lawyer Paul Kamenar, who noted that Rogers took home $126,969 in 2022 for working an average of two hours per week for both groups combined.

 

“His rate is a whopping $1,200 per hour, which is more than pricey Washington, D.C., attorneys,” Kamenar told the Washington Examiner.

Click here to read the entire story in the Washington Examiner.