Rubio Alleges Biden State Department Kept Dossiers on Americans, Including Trump Official

During a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed that the Biden administration’s State Department maintained dossiers on American citizens accused of spreading “disinformation,” including one file on an unidentified official from the Trump administration, Fox News reports.

Rubio made the allegations during a Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump:

“We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans. And, by the way, I’m not going to say who it is. I’ll leave it up to them. There’s at least one person at this table today who had a dossier in that building of social media posts to identify them as purveyors of disinformation. We have these dossiers. We are going to be turning those over to these individuals.”

Vice President JD Vance jokingly inquired “Was it me or Elon [Musk]? We can follow up when the media is gone,” eliciting laughter from the Cabinet.

Rubio elaborated:

“But just think about that. The Department of State of the United States had set up an office to monitor the social media posts and commentary of American citizens, to identify them as vectors of disinformation. When we know that the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency.”

Rubio appeared to be referring to an office formerly known as the Global Engagement Center, which he officially shuttered earlier this month as part of a broader reorganization of the State Department. Rubio alleged that the Global Engagement Center engaged with media outlets and platforms to censor speech it disagreed with, leading to accusations from conservatives that they were being unfairly targeted.

Journalist Matt Taibbi previously reported that the center “funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious — and idiotic — new form of blacklisting” during the pandemic, according to Fox Digital.

Taibbi added that the Global Engagement Center “flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like, ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.’”

Elon Musk echoed these concerns in January 2023, posting on X:

“The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEC. They are a threat to our democracy.” Musk, who endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential race, briefly served with the Department of Government Efficiency during the administration’s first term.

The Global Engagement Center was initially established by former President Barack Obama in 2016 through an executive order aimed at coordinating counterterrorism messaging to foreign nations. Its mission later expanded to include countering foreign propaganda and disinformation.

In 2024, Congress declined to approve new funding for the office, leading to its scheduled termination on December 23, 2024. However, the Biden administration reportedly shuffled staffers and rebranded the office as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub in the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration, according to the New York Post.

Secretary Rubio announced the closure of the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) on April 16, stating:

“Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving. This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America. That ends today.”