(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) America First Legal slapped the Biden administration with a new lawsuit on Friday over the State Department’s attempt to conceal records related to the anti-free speech Global Engagement Center.
AFL accused GEC of outsourcing government-mandated censorship plots to leftist groups and is now seeking Freedom of Information Act documents related to these efforts. This lawsuit marks the second legal action taken by AFL against the highly controversial group housed within the State Department.
In a press release, Gene Hamilton, America First Legal vice president and general counsel, announced what the group believe these documents will show.
“Citing ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’ as a pretext, the Biden Administration has launched an unprecedented assault against the First Amendment,” Hamilton said on Friday. “The records in this case will shed critical light on the Administration’s activities and reveal, for all to see, the parasitic relationship between the leftist nonprofit class and government overreach; the public’s right to know will be vindicated.”
According to AFL, attorneys with the group filed in December 2021, nine FOIA requests of documents potentially showing communications between the federal government and leftist nonprofits. AFL’s requests are related to taxpayer-funded grants awarded to the Atlantic Council, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Moonshot CVE and Digital Public Square.
The conservative legal group is also seeking any documents related to the potential funding of NATO and any group under the name “New Counter-Disinformation Game.”
The Biden State Department, however, has refused to release the requested records. AFL warned that these documents will prove that the regime “has turned the Global Engagement Center into a U.S. taxpayer-funded slush fund for the leftist ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.”
AFL has previously revealed scathing documents showing GEC promoting government-led talking points through leftist participants, including private media outlets. Just recently, ALF unleashed what they called a “secret list of ‘journalists‘” aiding in the alleged push of government propaganda.
“Now, AFL believes that the Biden Department of State may be withholding the records at issue in this suit to hinder and delay full public exposure of the means and methods through which it operates,” the group warned.
The complaint filed by America First Legal states, “The Plaintiff, America First Legal Foundation (‘AFL’), brings this action against the United States Department of State (‘State’) to compel compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (‘FOIA’), 5 U.S.C. § 552.”
Read the full lawsuit here.
