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FFO FDN FOR freedom online

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Allum Bokhari and Mike Benz are conservative researchers and tech commentators associated with the Foundation for Freedom Online who have highlighted internal USAID documents to argue that the agency acted as a financial channel for online censorship initiatives. Their findings align with Republican and Trump administration efforts to slash foreign aid and dismantle USAID. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Key Details and Findings

MOJO SEP 2025

Inside the hidden conservative network bankrolling an "ecosystem" of right-wing news

“Now more than ever, the world needs an honest newsroom.” With these words, the little-known Informing America Foundation was awarded the $250,000 Gregor G. Peterson Prize in “venture philanthropy” last December for its “high-quality journalism.”

If few had heard of IAF, hinted the nonprofit’s CEO, Debbie Myers, it was by design. “We stay very much under the radar,” she said, accepting the prize at the 2024 annual summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate-funded group that works to advance conservative policies at the state level. IAF’s goal, Myers explained, was to create an “ecosystem” of news. The group boasts of funding a network of thousands of platforms that have quietly shaped public opinion by stoking an array of right-wing conspiracy theories, from the alleged corruption of Joe Biden to the supposedly nefarious mission of the US Agency for International Development, along with more recent attacks on critics of President Donald Trump.

Myers, who once led Gingrich 360, Newt Gingrich’s multimedia production firm, is a longtime TV executive who helped produce shows such as Little People, Big World; Talk Soup; and Punkin Chunkin. Her “partner in crime” in launching IAF in 2021, as she described him as he joined her onstage, is John Solomon, a former investigative reporter for the Associated Press and Washington Post and a DC fixture who has drawn criticism for pushing right-wing stories and smearing Democrats with the kind of allegations that a Post ombudsman once described as “‘gotcha’ without a gotcha.”

In 2019, Solomon was at the forefront of efforts to tie Biden to shady dealings in Ukraine on his son Hunter’s behalf, penning a series of columns for The Hill that reported dubious information from Ukrainian prosecutors with an axe to grind. A 2020 review of his work by the paper called its reliability into question, concluding Solomon had “failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation.”

In the wake of the controversy, he set up the independent outlet Just the News and launched a podcast, John Solomon Reports. In an email, Solomon defended his Hill reporting’s accuracy and claimed he has no formal role at IAF, while confirming he provides it an office at the same K Street address as Just the News and another Solomon enterprise, Bentley Media Group. In 2021, Myers and Solomon also formed the Affinity Media Exchange, an advertising business that soon inked a deal with Trump’s Truth Social to be one of the platform’s ad representatives.

IAF’s tax filings, which say its mission is funding “investigative, explanatory, data-driven and multimedia journalism,” show it brought in close to $8 million in contributions during its first year, with the largest nonprofit donation coming from the family foundation of Diana Davis Spencer, whose late father, an investment banker, once chaired the Heritage Foundation. In subsequent years, millions have flowed to IAF through donor-advised charities that do not disclose the source of their initial contributions.

IAF, in turn, has doled out funds to an array of right-leaning outlets, including Just the News and Off the Press, run by Joseph Curl, a veteran of Drudge Report and the Washington Times. ADN América, aimed at Spanish speakers, received more than $1 million from IAF in the site’s first three years of operation. The foundation sent another million-plus to Performance One Media, which owns Real America’s Voice, the right-wing network best known for carrying Steve Bannon’s War Room. Real America’s Voice gave Solomon his own nightly show in 2022, which he has used to promote IAF allies.

IAF has also directed more than $1.7 million to Star News Digital Media, a conglomerate of 12 mostly battleground state sites whose names suggest a local focus but that actually push pro-GOP partisan news. Star News’ Tennessee Star, for instance, featured a section called “KamaLawfare” prior to the 2024 presidential election that highlighted incidents from Kamala Harris’ prosecutorial tenure in California, but seemed to ignore top news events in the state.

One day this past June, the homepages of Star News outlets in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Virginia looked almost identical, all covering transgender youth health care in California, New York City’s mayoral race, and a Florida sheriff’s threats against anti-Trump protesters.

Media observers have dubbed such agenda-driven news sites “pink slime”—so named for by-products added as filler to ground beef. Pink slime news is a growing phenomenon, according to University of Cincinnati journalism professor Jeffrey Blevins, rising as partisan interests take advantage of the devastated newspaper market. “We saw these news deserts popping up,” he says. “It was very cheap to put in a website and say, ‘Okay, we’re doing local news.’ Local news is always seen as being more credible.” Sites like the Tennessee Star, he explains, use that perception to push “poor-quality” coverage “funded by some outside political interest.”

In 2023, the most recent year tax records are available, filings show IAF’s largest contribution—more than $1 million—went to the Institute for Citizen Focused Service, a secretive nonprofit set up by Interior Department officials from Trump’s first term. In turn, ICFS has funneled money to Pipeline Advisors, which holds a portfolio of local outlets—including the Midland Times, Austin Journal, Federal Newswire, and others—that have also been described as pink slime. All told, IAF says its news “ecosystem” includes “more than 2,000 hyperlocal platforms and 10 national platforms” reaching an audience of more than 50 million people.

One hallmark of IAF-connected organizations is that they often promote the same allegations and storylines. This is no accident: At the award ceremony last December, Myers provided a glimpse into how IAF works, explaining that each morning, the team gathers on a call to choose the stories they believe the mainstream media is ignoring. After hanging up, “we amplify each other,” she said, “and get it to the hands of the American people.”

Star News outlets regularly repackage Just the News articles. Just the News writes stories based on Off the Press coverage and vice versa. They do not disclose their financial links. For example, Just the News covered the 2021 launch of Off the Press without noting that either organization was funded by IAF.

The network’s thousands of platforms have quietly shaped public opinion by stoking an array of right-wing conspiracy theories.

Solomon’s podcast often features guests from the broader IAF universe, including Mike Benz, a right-wing influencer and former Trump State Department official whose attacks targeting USAID as a “censorship octopus” helped fuel Elon Musk’s crusade to feed the agency to the “wood chipper.” Benz, a onetime alt-right Twitter troll, has appeared on Solomon’s show to rail against social media censorship and US foreign aid. In such appearances, he’s been identified as the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online—which is not a foundation, but which launched as a project of an organization called Empower Oversight that has also been heavily funded by IAF.

An Empower Oversight spokesperson said the group served as FFO’s fiscal sponsor through February 2023. That year, Benz was paid $253,889 by ICFS.

In 2022, Benz began issuing reports from his one-man think tank positing a conspiracy to silence conservatives online. IAF-funded outlets have presented a drumbeat of interviews with him, in which he argued that outfits battling online disinformation—from media watchdogs like NewsGuard to the US military and Big Tech—were actually undertaking a project to suppress conservative voices. The interviews presented Benz as an independent expert—“Mike Benz exposes State Department’s use of USAID as an ‘intelligence cloak,’” said one Just the News headline—without revealing that his think tank was little more than a website whose existence seems to have been made possible by IAF. The interviews got repackaged as news by other outlets in the IAF stable, expanding their reach.

Empower Oversight, the organization that originally backed Benz, was formed in Virginia in 2021, just one day before IAF was registered in Washington, DC. IAF supplied Empower Oversight with the sole grant it received that year, a $400,000 allocation whose purpose, according to tax filings, was to “develop an infrastructure to cultivate, protect and work with whistleblowers.” Since its founding, Empower Oversight has focused heavily on typical MAGA obsessions, including the Russian collusion probe, purported FBI involvement in January 6, and Hunter Biden.

Empower Oversight is headed by Jason Foster—a longtime aide to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley—whom ProPublica exposed in 2018 as an inflammatory blogger who wrote under the handle “Extremist.” According to ProPublica, Foster, a “partisan combatant” known for his “conspiratorial thinking,” was the main force behind the Senate Judiciary Committee’s scrutiny of research firm Fusion GPS and ex–British spy Christopher Steele, author of the 2016 memos alleging collusion between Trump and Russia.

Empower Oversight, which continues to receive most of its funding from IAF, represented Gary Shapley, an IRS criminal investigator who alleged that the Biden administration sandbagged a tax fraud investigation into Hunter Biden. (Earlier this year, Shapley briefly served as Trump’s IRS director.) Shapley’s allegations were heavily promoted by members of the IAF network, including Just the News, the Tennessee Star, and other Star News outlets such as the Pennsylvania Daily Star and the Arizona Sun Times.

During the Biden years, Empower Oversight’s work followed a familiar formula: First, it would file a battery of Freedom of Information Act requests to a federal agency, usually related to some right-wing intrigue or a query Grassley’s Senate office had submitted to that department. Empower Oversight then would frequently follow up with a lawsuit alleging deficiencies in the agency’s response. With the help of Solomon’s Just the News, it turned routine records requests and civil complaints into a PR bonanza, while fueling a narrative that the Biden administration and its supposed deep state allies were suppressing information.

While Benz did not respond to our requests for comment—and hung up when we called—he’s arguably delivered the most impact for IAF’s supporters. In April, the State Department shuttered its Global Engagement Center, which focused on combating foreign disinformation but which Benz had alleged was a government tool of anti-conservative censorship.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio rewarded Benz with an exclusive interview announcing the move. The next day, Just the News announced that the “censorship nerve center” had been shut down, and multiple Star News platforms dutifully signal-boosted the news. All cited Benz as merely a “former State official.”

Flow chart with the title “vast right-wing conspiracy, the informing America foundation has funneled millions of dollars from wealthy funders to conservative media platforms. Here’s a portion of its sprawling network. Level 1: IAF Founders include DonorsTrust, an opaque right-wing group, and the US Oil & Gas Association. Level 2: The foundation filings boast of backing “journalist entities” with roughly $4.4 million. At this level, there are Empower Oversight, Institute for Citizen Focus, Performance One Media (War Room), Gingrich 260, Concerned Communities of America, Bentley Media Group (Just the News), Accuracy in Media, Ulloo Media, Franklin News Foundation (The Center Square), Michigan News Source, Star News Digital Media. Level 3a. There is a line that connects Institute for Citizen Focused and Empower Overisght to Pipeline Advisors and Foundation for Freedom Online with the description text “Founded by ex-Trump officials, ICFS has supported anti-USAIF figure Mike Benz. Level 4a. There is a line from Pipeline Advisors to New Mexico Sun, Global Banner, Midland Times, the Federal Newswire, Austin Journal, Houston Journal, and the Coachella Valley Times with the text “pipeline advisors, a private equity firm, supports “pink slime” outlets.” Level 3b. There is a line that goes from Ulloo Media to ADN America with text that says “ADN’s Gelet Fragela, a Cuban American refugee, owns Ulloo.” Level 3c. There’s a line from Franklin News Foundation, Michigan News Source and Star News Digital Media which connects to local news sites with the line “IAF has given $1.7 million to support these state sites.” The state sites are The Georgia News Star, the Wisconsin Daily Star, the South Carolinian Sun, The Tennessee Star, The Minnesota Sun, the Ohio Star, the Arizona Sun Times, The Pennsylvania Daily Star, The Florida Capitol Star, The Connecticut Star, The Virginia Star and the Michigan StarSource: IRS

just the news solomon bs

USAID 'Disinformation Primer' targets gamers, advertisers, memes, 'right not to be disinformed'

...ng further than the Treasury Department's tacit support for debanking alleged "hate groups" after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, a State Department component that "strengthen[s] resilient democratic societies" developed a more sweeping plan for financially choking off disfavored narratives a month later.

The U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a "Disinformation Primer" that appears to have been started in "late 2020," judging by a reference to the most up-to-date "social media initiatives" by Facebook and Twitter "to address disinformation and misinformation."

It was still being written at least 10 days into the Biden administration, referring twice to the Jan. 31, 2021 Myanmar military coup, which the primer says "underlined issues of internet freedom and disinformation."

State turned over the 88-page document, dated February 2021 and marked "internal use only," as part of a 102-page production in response to Freedom of Information Act litigation by America First Legal.

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The primer was "conceived and developed by Joshua Machleder and Shannon Maguire at USAID, together with" the University of Chicago organization formerly known as the National Opinion Research Center, the introduction says.

It thanks dozens of individuals at universities and government institutions including the National Endowment for Democracy and U.S. Institute for Peace "for sharing their time, opinions, and expertise," and current and former USAID staff for "opinions and feedback."

USAID didn't respond to requests for comment on its view of the primer now.

"Just as human rights advocates have argued that internet access is a human right and that there is a fundamental right to access of information, there is also a right not to be disinformed," the primer says in a section laying out 10 steps for USAID and partners to take in "countering and preventing disinformation."

These include partnering with other governments, supporting "media monitoring and fact-checking initiatives," and "form[ing] synergies" with "civil society, media, social media platforms, internet governance forums, and other donors" to prevent disinformation, especially working with "data scientists, social scientists, and journalists."

miller?

AFL gave the FOIA production to the Foundation for Freedom Online, which published an analysis Thursday by executive director and former State communications official Mike Benz, managing director Allum Bokhari and graduate student Oscar Buynevich.

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The primer mentions "advertising" 19 times and advertisers or advertisements a dozen times, showing USAID support for the "well-established tactic of the censorship industry – financial blacklisting," FFO's analysis says.

While much of the report promotes the more-speech-is-better approach, such as funding local journalism, a section on "supply-side responses" – written in the passive tense – implies both governments and activists should pressure advertisers to flee alleged sources of disinformation.

Most advertisers are "unaware of the disinformation risk of the domains featuring their ads due to the automated process of ad placement," the "Advertiser Outreach" subsection says.

"Thus, cutting this financial support found in the ad-tech space would obstruct disinformation actors from spreading messaging online," it says. "Efforts have been made to inform advertisers of their risks, such as the threat to brand safety by being placed next to objectionable content, through conducting research and assessments of online media content."

While the primer says it provides examples of advertiser outreach in an annex on "emerging solutions," none of the examples explicitly mentions advertising. The annex does include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's public awareness campaign about pineapple on pizza.

FFO highlighted the primer's support for the supply-side "Redirect Method," piloted by Moonshot and Google's Jigsaw in 2016, "an open-source methodology that uses targeted advertising" on platforms such as Google Adwords "to connect people searching online for harmful content with constructive alternative messages."

It was used to "target individuals susceptible to ISIS radicalization via recruiting measures" and "is being adapted in several countries to combat vaccine hesitancy and hate speech," the primer says.

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The Redirect Method is a "precursor" to Google's "prebunking" initiative, which the Alphabet-owned company said last year it was expanding into Germany and India, FFO said. Prebunking is based on inoculation theory, which treats disfavored narratives as a virus.

FFO notes the primer touts the work of former Harvard misinformation researcher and Hunter Biden laptop truther Joan Donovan, who advocates prebunking.

Comedian Jon Stewart publicly challenged Donovan's work and former Facebook policy chief Eliot Schrage reportedly did so privately as a Harvard Kennedy School adviser, both questioning who gets to decide what counts as "disinformation."

USAID separately thanked State's Global Engagement Center staff for "their review and feedback."

GEC has funded and promoted internet games that teach children to view populism as disinformation – a form of prebunking – and promote "social justice."

It also funded the Global Disinformation Index, which pressures advertisers to cut off alleged sources of disinformation, predominantly conservative publishers – drawing the ire of congressional Republicans and a lawsuit by two publishers.

The primer calls for targeting "gaming sites," including Amazon-owned Twitch, because "problematic information more regularly originates from networks of alternative sites and anonymous individuals" than from state actors.

USAID put scare quotes around "mainstream" twice to describe sources outside of gaming communities. While these "conspiracy theories may seem farcical or preposterous to an outsider," the primer warns, mainstream sources covering gaming communities "may unknowingly provide wide coverage of misleading information."

The primer also puts scare quotes around "research" to describe gamers taking the initiative to educate themselves, "collectively reviewing and validating each other to create a populist expertise that justifies, shapes and supports their alternative beliefs."

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Malinformation, sometimes described as true but inconvenient, also makes an appearance in the primer. It's defined as "deliberate publication of private information for personal or private interest" that is "taken out of context," as well as the "deliberate manipulation of genuine content" and "hate speech."

Memes are "a common means" for malinformation to spread, the primer warns. "[T]he most effective are humorous or critical of society ... but researchers note they also can be dangerous."

The supply-side section acknowledges the "inherent contradiction between the democratic ideal of free speech and the regulation of online content" and warns that democracies that pass anti-disinformation laws can embolden "authoritarians" to do the same.

One way to have their cake and eat it too is for democracies to adopt "co-regulatory models" such as the "industry-led Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) and the government-led Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs)," the primer says.

GROK

...Foundation for Freedom Online Role

Mike Benz serves as the founder and Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), a nonprofit watchdog organization focused on combating online censorship and promoting free speech and digital liberties.[5][11] His background as a former U.S. State Department official who worked on international communications and information technology policy positioned him to lead the organization.[11]In this role, Benz directs FFO's operations, overseeing efforts to safeguard online expression.[11]FFO's stated goals center on functioning as a free speech watchdog to restore the promise of a free and open Internet, including combating censorship threats in digital spaces. The organization's mission is nonpartisan and centered on internet freedom, with no specific Jewish affiliation or focus.[11]

Advocacy Initiatives

The Foundation for Freedom Online has published investigative reports highlighting perceived government overreach in online content moderation, including the August 2022 report titled "Department of Homeland Censorship," which scrutinizes the Department of Homeland Security's involvement in flagging and suppressing certain narratives on social media platforms.[14] Another key report under its auspices examines the initial missions of DHS censorship entities, focusing on efforts to curb speech questioning official narratives, such as those related to election integrity.[15]

FFO's campaigns emphasize monitoring and critiquing non-governmental organizations and public-private partnerships that advocate for expanded content restrictions under the guise of combating disinformation and promoting media literacy, positioning these as threats to open internet access.[16] These efforts include analyses of digital literacy programs in educational settings that allegedly embed ideological biases, aiming to advocate for policies preserving unrestricted online discourse.[**16]In collaborative advocacy, FFO has contributed to legal challenges against censorship mechanisms, such as authoring or supporting amicus briefs in U.S. Supreme Court cases addressing government coordination with tech companies on content suppression.[15] The organization aligns with broader coalitions pushing for legislative reforms to dismantle what it describes as a censorship industrial complex involving federal agencies and NGOs.[14]

...

EVIL BUT

Critics of Benz and FFO claim he previously was an “alt-right content creator.” ^3 Benz has claimed that his previous involvement in controversial forums was part of “a project by Jews to get people who hated Jews to stop hating Jews” that “made contact with groups in the early primordial soup of the MAGA movement in 2016 and sought to move people from a place of hate and division closer to a place of love and unity” and “was successful.” ^4

Background

The Foundation for Freedom Online is a right-of-center online watchdog group that claims to promote “an open Internet.” ^1 The group further claims it advocates in favor of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and the free exchange of ideas online. ^2

The organization writes and publishes reports, provides legal assistance, and analyzes public policy concerning what it claims are threats to digital safety and online rights. ^2

The group reporting also focuses on the impact of politics on freedom of speech speech on social media. The group further claims it advocates for holding public officials accountable to ensure they protect Americans’ First Amendment rights online. ^1

Founder

Mike Benz is the founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO). ^2 Benz previously served as a deputy assistant to the U.S. secretary of state during the Trump administration ^5 where focused on negotiating U.S. foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. ^2 Benz has previously claimed that the “two most censored events in human history” were the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic. ^6

During an interview with Federal Newswire in 2023, Benz claimed that the FFO’s goal is to, “to restore the golden age of the internet. The free and open internet that existed from the time it was privatized in 1991, up until the geopolitical earthquakes of 2016.” He further claimed that after 2016 there was, “a sort of whole-society effort to implement domestic censorship.” ^7

NBC News reported in October 2023 that Benz “appears to have been a pseudonymous alt-right content creator” under the name “Frame Game,” who warned about a “white genocide” before he worked in government. Though professing to be Jewish, “Frame Game” also denounced “Jewish influence” in society and the media. “Frame Game” also allegedly posted about “Great Replacement Theory,” a conspiracy theory of systematically replacing white Americans with non-white immigrants. NBC News cited an anonymous “acquaintance of Benz” as its source on the story. ^3

Benz has claimed that his previous involvement in controversial forums was part of “a project by Jews to get people who hated Jews to stop hating Jews” that “made contact with groups in the early primordial soup of the MAGA movement in 2016 and sought to move people from a place of hate and division closer to a place of love and unity” and “was successful.” He further argued that he was “extremely proud of this [project].”

He also wrote, “I would not participate today and do not endorse participating in something like this in a general sense. It was a creature of a very bizarre and volatile time in early 2016 in which fellow conservative Jews were facing rising sentiments of anti-Semitism on our right – from people voting the same way for President – and political persecution and censorship from the ADL on our left. Having to move extreme elements from a fixation on identity to a focus on reforming institutions was a Bizarro World situation that called for a kind of Bizarro World logic of which I am proud, but would not repeat today.”4

The New York Times reported that Benz responded to the allegations by claiming his involvement in such controversial forums was part of “‘a deradicalization project’ to which he contributed in a ‘limited manner.’”8

Research and Claims

Reports by the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) have previously been cited by the U.S. House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. ^3 ^9

The FFO investigated the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM, which shut down in 2024 amid congressional and legal scrutiny. The FFO analysis found that four of GARM’s members were among the “big six” global advertising agency holding companies that received billions from federal departments including the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S Department of Health and Human Services. ^10

The organization also alleged that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has censored conservatives while claiming to be engaged in “cybersecurity operations.” He said the agency was “shipping out the dirty work to firms in London,” by working with the Global Engagement Center of the U.S. State Department and sending information to a British psychology lab called the Social Decision-Making Lab at the University of Cambridge. ^11

The FFO has argued that certain nonprofits are part of a larger “censorship industry” that collaborates with government agencies to control and moderate online content, using the excuse of fighting misinformation and disinformation. Benz claims there is a revolving door between government roles in misinformation control and positions at non-profits. He further claimed that an example was with the Atlantic Council, which ran an opinion piece by Carole House, formerly Director for Cybersecurity and Secure Digital Innovation for the White House National Security Council. ^12

FFO executive director Mike Benz accused NewsGuard of creating a blacklist of 650 news sites that it used to pressure advertisers to boycott. He compared this to “Operation Mockingbird,” a CIA operation from the 1950s to the 1970s aimed at influencing media content. ^13

Renee DiResta, a former research director of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), criticized the FFO in a New York Times op-ed claiming that an FFO’s report, in which it claimed the SIO’s Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) had pushed social media networks to censor 22 million Twitter posts was false. DiResta’s op-ed further argued that the number FFO came to was a tally of viral election rumors her organization counted and put in a report after the 2020 election was over, and insisted nothing was censored. ^14

Foreign Policy Assertions

Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) executive director Mike Benz has previously claimed that the biggest driver of Internet censorship the “foreign policy establishment” which he asserts includes, “our State Department, our Pentagon, our intelligence services.” ^15

Benz further alleged that the U.S. government had funded the Brazilian NGOs and Brazilian think tanks that were part of the Brazilian government’s move to ban X (formerly Twitter) in the country. ^16