A former Twitter executive behind the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story suggested a government advisory committee "meet with" a group that blacklisted conservative media, the Washington Examiner reported.
Ex-Twitter chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, as a member of a Department of Homeland Security subcommittee in June 2022, cited the State Department-backed Global Disinformation Index (GDI) among groups she considered worth coordinating with the panel, according to emails obtained by the watchdog Functional Government Initiative and shared with the Examiner.
At the time, Gadde was a member of the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) since-disbanded Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation Subcommittee, which has come under heightened scrutiny from Republicans over its alleged "censorship" of disfavored speech, the Examiner reported.
"Here are some follow up ideas for groups that might be helpful to us to meet with," Gadde, who listed GDI as an expert on COVID-19 issues, wrote in a June 7, 2022, email to then-subcommittee member and University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, as well as other members and DHS employees.
GDI, a British think tank that has fed blacklists of conservative websites to advertisers with the intent of stripping their revenues, has been the subject of numerous congressional investigations.
GDI reportedly received about $960,000 combined from the State Department's Global Engagement Center and government-backed National Endowment for Democracy nonprofit group.
Starbird has been blasted by Republicans for her role with her university's Center for an Informed Public, "which formed in 2019 around a shared mission of resisting strategic misinformation."
"The subcommittee did not connect with the GDI [and] Dr. Starbird stands behind the work," Michael Grass, a spokesman for the University of Washington, told the Examiner.
Functional Government Initiative spokesman Pete McGinnis said the Gadde email nevertheless raises concerns because "GDI has been one of the biggest culprits of actively pushing to censor conservative voices."
"These documents reveal that in the wake of public outcry over the Disinformation Governance Board, the instinctive response by disinformation captains such as Vijaya Gadde and Kate Starbird was to seek the support and partnership of GDI, an organization with clear political bias," McGinnis told the Examiner.
Gadde's email, which had not been reported previously, shows how CISA's heavily scrutinized "misinformation" subcommittee sought to interact with third parties Republicans say have selectively censored right-leaning voices on the internet.
Elon Musk fired Gadde in October 2022 after he took over Twitter.
Gadde reportedly approved Twitter's move before the 2020 election to block links from being shared in connection to a New York Post story based on Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop.
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