Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed in a cabinet meeting that the Biden administration's State Department kept dossiers on Americans accused of serving as "vectors of disinformation." (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images )
"We're not going to have an office that does that."
RUBIO ANNOUNCES CLOSURE OF STATE DEPARTMENT EFFORT THAT 'WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD ALREADY'
Rubio appeared to be referring to an office within the State Department previously known as the Global Engagement Center, which he officially shuttered earlier in April.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not identify which Trump official the Biden administration kept a dossier on, but Elon Musk previously railed against the Global Engagement Center. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
"The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEC," Musk posted to X in January 2023. That was more than a year before Musk endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential race and became a fixture of the administration in his temporary role with the Department of Government Efficiency.
"They are a threat to our democracy," Musk added.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for additional details on which Trump official was targeted but did not immediately receive a reply.
WHITE HOUSE PROPOSAL AXES UN, NATO FUNDS AND HALVES STATE DEPARTMENT BUDGET
Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk railed against the Global Engagement Center in 2023. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Former President Barack Obama established the small office in 2016 through an executive order aimed at coordinating counterterrorism messaging to foreign nations before it expanded its scope to also include countering foreign propaganda and disinformation, State Department documents show.
In 2024, lawmakers did not approve new funding for the office in the National Defense Authorization Act, and it was scheduled to terminate Dec. 23, 2024. The Biden administration, however, shuffled staffers and rebranded the office. It became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub in the waning days before Trump's inauguration, the New York Post reported in January.
"I am announcing the closure of the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI), formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC)," Rubio said in an April 16 statement announcing the office's closure.
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"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," he wrote. "This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America. That ends today."
Fox News Digital's Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rubio-reveals-obscure-office-under-biden-kept-disinformation-dossier-trump-official