Government Documents Confirm the Biden Administration’s Mobilization of U.S. Counterterrorism Assets to Support Imran Ahmed’s Global Censorship Campaign

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) released documents obtained from its investigation into the Biden administration’s communications with Imran Ahmed and his UK-based censorship group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The emails from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of State show how the Biden Administration mobilized the federal government’s counterterrorism assets to support CCDH’s global censorship campaign.

Biden Mobilizes the National Security State for Censorship

From the day it took power, the Biden Administration mobilized the national security state to support its censorship program. On June 15, 2021, Biden’s National Security Council published its first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

To justify censorship, Biden’s strategy asserted that “Internet-based communications platforms” make Americans “vulnerab[le] to domestic terrorist recruitment and other harmful content.” Effectively, the Biden Administration turned to the national security state and its allied technology companies to censor political opponents. In Orwellian fashion, it said: “All told, a better, more holistic, and coordinated understanding of and information sharing on today’s threat will allow a more effective and comprehensive response. That response will address not just current and imminent incarnations of the domestic terrorism threat but also its contributing factors before they can generate still more violence in the future.”

Biden Endorses the “Christchurch Call to Action”

As the Biden Strategy explained, as part of its effort to control information, “We will also build a community” of “critical partners,” including “state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, as well as foreign allies and partners, civil society, the technology sector, academia, and more.” These “interlocking communities that can contribute information, expertise, analysis, and more” and “With the right orientation and partnerships, the Federal Government can energize, connect, and empower those communities – communities whose input was critical to the formulation of this Strategy itself.”

Accordingly, it declared that “in a global, multi-stakeholder setting … with partner governments … the United States endorses the Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online.”