Shellenberger: USAID-Funded and Controlled Organization Participated In Russiagate Hoax

REP. THOMAS MASSIE (R-KY): Mr. Shellenberger, can you explain how you traced USAID funding that served as the basis for whistleblower report in 2019 which led to the impeachment of President Trump?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Sure, well you may remember that the so-called whistleblowers in the White House was actually a CIA analyst and in that whistleblower's complaint which led to the impeachment, one of the central pieces of evidence was created by a USAID-funded and controlled organization called the OCCRP. And we have another piece out today about how it participated in the Russiagate hoax as well, creating essentially very important information leading to that. So I mean you have in USAID a much larger fund of money and a much broader strategy for information control that included censorship but also as I mentioned taking control of investigative journalism really worldwide.

I amazing. So yeah, I mean that's an agency when we saw that get shut down by Doge, I thought that was completely appropriate. If there's something in there that it was doing that's valuable, then you could refund it later.

But my view, same thing with CISA, death penalty for organizations that participated in violations of the First Amendment like CISA. Cybersecurity is an extremely important function. It shouldn't be contaminated and undermined by censorship activities.

MASSIE: I think it's always been known that our government has funded the change in administrations, if we can say it politely, of other governments. But isn't it borderline treason when the taxpayer, when organizations entrusted with protecting our country are now undermining our own government?

SHELLENBERGER: Absolutely. I mean if you're trying to do regime change, illegal, if you're weaponizing DHS, FBI, CISA, that's treasonous regime change activities redirected that you developed abroad, that we developed abroad for regime change directed against the American people and our representatives. I mean it's shocking and we still haven't dealt with it as a country.