USAID is no more. Most of its staff have been given their pink slips as the agency is absorbed into the State Department. The agency got slashed by the Department of Government Efficiency’s katana, which unearthed a horde of wasteful spending that was unjustified and unjustifiable. The millions devoted to various liberal media outlets, Politico being the primary target, proved to be quite a revelation. We all knew there was a Democrat media complex, and now we had the receipts and money trail to prove it.
Yet, this sordid relationship is about to exit the news cycle because of an even greater effort to establish a quasi-state-media operation, as exposed this week. If you’re not familiar with Internews Network, you should. A half billion dollars was devoted to this propaganda experiment. Its work was done secretly, a red flag if anyone saw one. Wikileaks has more. Another red flag is that the headquarters for this operation is an abandoned office building:
USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training” over…
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 8, 2025
USAID (and State) funneled nearly half a billion dollars through this building which is at "876 7th St Arcata, CA 95521-6358". The IRS and IN government contracts list this address as the current registered address for IN although it was clearly abandoned by December 2024. Shot… pic.twitter.com/ELzv3G4p5l
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 8, 2025
Bio for Jeanne Bourgault: pic.twitter.com/vZMGXfIpcA
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 8, 2025
Jeanne Bourgault at the World Economic Forum (2024) calling to develop "exclusion lists" to pressure advertisers to fund "good news and information" in order to deal with "disinformation".https://t.co/wVsVbd6Esy
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 8, 2025
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USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives.
The operation claims “offices” in over 30 countries, including main offices in US, London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. It is headed up by Jeanne Bourgault, who pays herself $451k a year. Bourgault worked out of the US embassy in Moscow during the early 1990s, where she was in charge of a $250m budget, and in other revolts or conflicts at critical times, before formally rotating out of six years at USAID to IN.
Bourgault’s IN bio and those of its other key people and board members have been recently scrubbed from its website but remain accessible at http://archive.org. Records show the board being co-chaired by Democrat securocrat Richard J. Kessler and Simone Otus Coxe, wife of NVIDIA billionaire Trench Coxe, both major Democratic donors. In 2023, supported by Hillary Clinton, Bourgault launched a $10m IN fund at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The IN page showing a picture of Bourgault at the CGI has also been deleted.
IN has at least six captive subsidiaries under unrelated names including one based out of the Cayman Islands. Since 2008, when electronic records begin, more than 95% of IN's budget has been supplied by the US government…
There’s much to unpack here, and we’ll keep you updated. Matt Taibbi of Racket News could only describe this operation as such:
Have you ever come across a big piece of plywood lying flat in a field, or a junkyard? Sometimes you pick it up and it’s just dirt, and sometimes it’s a mass of snakes and maggots and wriggling things.
USAID was covertly creating a state media apparatus, paid for by our tax dollars. Nothing is shocking regarding DC cesspool antics, but hearings and investigations must start. What the hell?
This is the first major fraud I think has been uncovered from scrutiny of USAID.
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) February 8, 2025
- USAID has funneled $472.6 million through Internews Network (IN).
- IN has worked with 4,291 media outlets, producing 4,799 hours of broadcasts.
- Reached up to 778 million people.
- Trained… pic.twitter.com/Y3sqBFj85L
USAID took ~$500M in taxes from Americans, and sent it to an NGO called Internews Network. They work with 4,000+ outlets to “train journalists” and “tackle disinformation”. It’s led by Jeanne Bourgault, who makes ~$500k a year.
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) February 8, 2025
A literal state propaganda network. https://t.co/7Q55qQibnr
The "Internews Network" is the biggest megabucks fraud octopus so far, with major players involved and what looks like a true thought-control agenda
— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) February 8, 2025
Monstrously bad
Follow this one and don't be distracted https://t.co/y7WXbIFFwD
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