The idea that US officials worked to censor ordinary Americans is a debunked conspiracy theory, say the mainstream media. But it's not. And now, newly released documents reveal a conspiracy not just to violate the First Amendment but also to interfere with the 2020 elections.
New Documents Reveal US Department Of Homeland Security Conspiracy To Violate First Amendment And Interfere In Elections
Emails released by the U.S. House of Representatives, when combined with the Twitter Files, reveal a sweeping and secretive effort by Stanford and DHS officials, two of whom are now business partners
by @galexybrane & @shellenberger
Stanford Internet Observatory’s Alex Stamos (Left) and former DHS-CISA Director Chris Krebs (Right) are now business partners. The current CISA Director is Jen Easterly (Center). [All photos from Getty Images]
The idea that the officials within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security worked with a Stanford think tank to censor ordinary Americans and thus interfere in the 2020 elections is a debunked conspiracy theory, say journalists in the mainstream news media. The Republicans spreading that conspiracy theory, say journalists with the New York Times, Washington Post, and New Yorker, are also waging a witch hunt against university researchers who study misinformation. It is for that reason that the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), which is home to those researchers, had long refused Republican requests for their emails and data.
But newly released documents suggest that SIO may have had a very different motivation for not sharing their files with Congressional investigators: they show that the idea for sweeping government censorship, in which the Stanford think tank played a central role, came from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Internet Security Agency (CISA). According to one of CISA’s censorship partners, the so-called “Election Integrity Partnership” (EIP), which was ostensibly separate from CISA, was created at its behest.
In an internal Atlantic Council email sent on July 21 2020, Graham Brookie, the senior director of the Council’s “Disinformation Forensic Research Lab,” (DRFLab), wrote to a colleague to say the following: “I know the Council has a number of efforts on broad policy around the elections, but we just set up an election integrity partnership at the request of DHS/CISA and are in weekly comms to debrief about disinfo, IO, etc.” (Emphasis added.)
Brookie’s acknowledgment contradicts the claim made by the EIP that the idea for the project “came from four students that the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) funded to complete volunteer internships at [CISA].” Brookie’s email also contradicts the testimony of the SIO’s Director, Alex Stamos, earlier this year, who told Congressional investigators that the idea for EIP was his.
There is evidence that DHS-CISA had started interfering in elections several months earlier. On April 15, 2020, the DHS-CISA chief of “Countering Foreign Influence Task Force,” Brian Scully, emailed Twitter executives about a “Government-Industry Meeting,” that was held the next day. The issues discussed included election information.
By November, Twitter executives, Scully, and at least one of the Stanford interns were on a Signal text messaging app group together.
According to the U.S. Supreme Court, it is “axiomatic” that the US government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Whether it was Stamos or the Director of CISA at the time, Chris Krebs, it’s clear that the U.S. government was directly involved in the Stanford-linked effort to censor Americans.
The documents are revelatory in showing that CISA officials, Stanford officials, and social media executives worked together in secret in ways that not only violated the First Amendment but also interfered in the 2020 elections by attempting to censor protected political speech, particularly that of conservatives and Republicans.
Although we do not know the effects of EIP’s activities on the 2020 election results, and although some of these activities occurred after election day, it’s clear that SIO, EIP, and CISA engaged in viewpoint-based censorship that amounts to attempted interference leading up to the election.
There was virtually no separation between CISA and Stanford employees in 2020. On September 30, 2020, an EIP staffer said that Stamos and Krebs were texting each other “with some regularity.”
Since 2021, former CISA Director Krebs, and Stanford Internet Observatory Director Stamos have owned a consulting firm that works for private equity, aerospace, and satellite companies, among many others.
In 2020, CISA officials and personnel from EIP were often on emails together, and CISA’s personnel had access to EIP’s tickets through an internal messaging system, Jira, which EIP used to flag and report social media posts to Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.
The Biden administration and journalists have insisted that CISA did not violate the constitution because it was not coercive and merely engaged in “switchboarding” activities, acting as a middleman. But, the new documents reveal that CISA included a threatening disclaimer in its switchboarding communications, which stated that “information may also be shared with law enforcement or intelligence agencies.”
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It's up to the courts not the Administration to determine whether it is non-justiciable. The administration must comply with the order until a higher court reverses it or sets it aside. That's how our system works.
If the Trump administration continues with these obviously unconstitutional actions, then it will lose the legitimacy, public support, and power it needs to pursue free speech diplomacy, which would be a very disappointing outcome @SecRubio @marcorubio
There's no proof of major waste, fraud, or abuse in govt spending, say the media. But there is. And now Public has obtained invoices revealing that a major contractor overcharged the Ed. Dept, paid its CEO $2M/year, and promoted debunked research as student performance declined.
US Education Department Contractor Overcharged Taxpayers While Spending Millions On Executive Salaries
As student math and reading scores declined, the American Institute of Research charged 50% in indirect costs and paid its CEO over $2 million
by @galexybrane and @shellenberger
Over the last few weeks, the media and Democrats have been lambasting President Donald Trump for cutting the Department of Education’s research budget. In particular, the media criticized the Trump administration for cutting a contractor’s research into support services for students with disabilities who are nearing graduation.
But it’s not clear that the research was necessary or successful, and there is already both state and federal funding aimed at helping students with disabilities to develop life skills and plans for the future.
And now Public has obtained invoices showing that the Department’s contractor for the research in question, American Institute for Research (AIR), had significantly overcharged the Department in so-called indirect costs.
The invoice is from November 18, 2024, and shows AIR billing the Department $411,961.35 for the month of October 2024. Of that money, $214,952.74 was in “total indirects.” AIR charged an additional $26,950.74 as a 7% fee.
The invoice shows that the cumulative amount that AIR had billed the Department of Education was $10,957,275.73, of which $4,993,376.12 was total indirects and $716,831.18 was total additional fees.
A second invoice is from January 15, 2025, and shows AIR billing the Department $60,913.72 for the month of December 2024. Of that money, $29,685.23 was in total indirects. AIR charged an additional $3,985.01 as a 7% fee.
The invoice shows that the cumulative amount that AIR had billed the Department of Education was $11,076,493.79, of which $5,028,446.77 was total indirects and $724,630.48 was total additional fees.
In response to questions from Public, an AIR spokesperson said, “AIR’s indirect rates are similar to those of other social and behavioral research organizations and we have always abided by our approved rates. For government contractors, indirect costs include such costs as information technology, data security, and compliance and reporting.”
However, 50% in indirect fees is widely considered excessive. The National Institutes of Health recently required that its contractors lower indirect costs to 15% to reduce widespread overcharging.
Indeed, when asked about the invoice, a spokesperson for the Department of Education condemned the high fees. “Contracts with indirect rates over 50% take gross advantage of taxpayer dollars, perverting the reason the contracts exist — our students,” said Department spokesperson Madison Biedermann. “Incoming leadership will no longer allow these unacceptable terms.”
According to AIR’s IRS 990 form, the total compensation of AIR’s chief executive, David Myers, in the most recent year available, 2023, was $2,241,374.
“At the end of 2023, David Myers finished a 14-year tenure as AIR’s President and Chief Executive Officer,” said the AIR spokesperson. “His compensation for his final year included a retention payment. The salary for our current President and CEO is lower and in line with what other non-profit organizations of our size and type pay their chief executives.”
However, AIR’s tax forms showed that Myers earned $2,294,637 in 2022 and $1,145,400 in 2021.
Jessica Heppen is the current president and CEO. In 2023, she earned $685,060 as president. Neither Heppen nor Myers responded to Public’s request for comment.
AIR’s 990 form shows other high salaries for staff and fees for board members. AIR’s Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, earned $931,610 in 2023, and its CFO earned $1,145,400 in 2022. A member of the AIR Board, Robert Boruch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, received $80,250 in 2023 for just 2 hours of work per week, which is $772 per hour.
While nonprofit board members typically donate their time, 14 of AIR’s board members received hundreds of dollars per hour for their service. None responded to requests by Public for comment.
AIR’s fees should be considered in the broader context of declining student performance and AIR’s role to provide research that improves student performance.
Today, only 31% of fourth graders and only 30% of eighth graders are reading at or above proficiency levels, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In eighth grade reading, 33% of students scored “below basic,” the highest percentage recorded in the NAEP’s history.
Congress established the Education Department in 1979 “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”
Student performance has declined across the board over the last 10 years. While Covid school closures significantly worsened them, math and reading scores declined for fourth- and eighth-graders nationwide from 2014 to 2024.
AIR appears to be partly responsible. It gave a favorable evaluation to Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study curriculum, which used elements of the now-debunked “whole language” approach to reading instead of systematic phonics instruction.
Under the whole language approach, teachers taught children to memorize whole words and use guessing strategies instead of sounding out individual sounds in unfamiliar words.
The failure of the whole language approach was precisely why the Department of Education hires groups like AIR. The goal of research is to discover which teaching methods work and which don’t before schools adopt them. That didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite did. The result was a whole generation of children robbed of fundamental literacy.
“It is absolutely inaccurate to say we ‘gave a favorable evaluation’ to Units of Study,” said AIR.
But the evaluation was clearly positive. Implementation of the curriculum, AIR’s report stated, “is associated with improvements in ELA [English Language Arts] achievement starting in the second year of implementation, and in schools that opt to continue with the approach long term, the magnitude of the effects grow larger over time.”
And even AIR noted, in its email to Public, “We found no positive effect in the first year of implementation, then saw positive effects in subsequent years for some schools.”
Other Department contractors had much lower indirect rates. Why was AIR able to charge so much?
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The former head of the UK's foreign intelligence agency, MI6, told Boris Johnson in early 2020 that the Covid virus escaped from the Wuhan lab. That means that the US, UK, Chinese, & German governments all knew the truth, covered it up, and spread disinformation. Case closed.
"It is now beyond reasonable doubt that Covid-19 was engineered in Wuhan Institute of Virology... [China] is now engaged in an information & influence operation (IO) to deflect responsibility....the Journal Nature was used to promulgate the narrative..."
The newly released memo coauthored by the former head of MI6 is focused on how the Nature "Proximal Origin" paper was used to promote China's natural spillover narrative.
We reported in 2023 on hundreds of previously unreleased email and Slack direct messages which cover the period when Kristian Andersen and his colleagues collaborated to write “Proximal Origin."
They show that Andersen and his colleagues clearly thought it was indeed possible not only that the virus that causes Covid-19 had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but specifically that it had been cultured in the laboratory.
The documents make clear that pressure from “higher ups” — not “additional data, analyses, learning more about coronaviruses, and discussions with colleagues and collaborators” — led Andersen, Garry, and two of their coauthors to abandon the lab leak theory as implausible.
What’s more, the messages reveal that Andersen still suspected that a lab leak was possible in mid-April, a month after Nature Medicine officially published “Proximal Origin,” and two months after the authors published a preprint.
If the paper’s authors weren’t fully convinced that no culturing was possible, why did they rule out “any type of laboratory-based scenario” in their paper?
If the consensus opinion of the scientists across dozens of their initial emails and messages had to be summarized in a single phrase, it would be the name of the Slack channel: “project-wuhan_engineering.”
The name showed just how probable they felt it was that the virus came from a lab.
Then, on February 6, something strange happened. Andersen changed the name of the Slack channel from “project-wuhan_engineering” to “project-wuhan_pangolin.”
Zelensky says he wants the war to end, but he’s not acting like it. Friday he dismissed the US ceasefire as unworkable. Saturday he had European leaders affirm his position. And now he says the end of the war is “very, very far away.” Feels like we’re being played.
If Zelensky’s strategy is to alienate the American people, and the president they just elected, one day before he addresses Congress, it’s working.
Even The Guardian now gets it:
“On Friday, in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy contested Trump’s stance. The Ukrainian president stated flatly: “We will never accept just [a] ceasefire. It will not work without security guarantees.” Zelenskyy maintained that strong security guarantees had to come from the US, not just Europe. A European military force, he said, would not work unless the US provided a significant backstop: ‘They need USA.’
“In short, Zelenskyy insisted he would not agree to a ceasefire, because Russia would not honor it, unless the US provided precisely what Trump had seemingly already ruled out.
Zelenskyy says he’s grateful for US support but he acts entitled to it. He still hasn’t apologized for his behavior. And now he’s demanding the US do more. Zelensky, like Europe, doesn’t respect us. And relationships without mutual respect can’t last.
People say The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994 provided security assurances, but it did not include a binding defense commitment. Even pro-war voices admit the US is not legally obligated to defend Ukraine militarily under the Budapest Memorandum.
To the people defending Zelenskyy: watch the full video. His behavior perfectly encapsulates the disrespect, dislike, and even contempt the majority of Europeans hold toward Americans.