Secretary of State Marco Rubio disclosed Wednesday that a little-known office within the Biden-Harris administration’s State Department maintained secret dossiers on American citizens, including at least one official from the Trump administration, labeling them as sources of so-called “disinformation.”

Rubio made the announcement during a Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump, revealing the extent to which the State Department was involved in monitoring Americans’ social media activity during the previous administration.

“We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans,” Rubio said.

“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.”

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Vice President J.D. Vance responded with a quip, “Was it me or Elon [Musk]? We can follow up when the media is gone,” prompting laughter in the room.

Rubio explained that the State Department’s efforts to identify and label Americans as disinformation vectors was part of a broader attempt to control public discourse under the guise of countering foreign propaganda.

“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,” Rubio said.

“When we know that the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency. We’re not going to have an office that does that.”

This is NUTS: Secretary Rubio just announced that he found DOZENS of files kept by Joe Biden’s State Department that classified American citizens as “vectors of disinformation” — with the intention of censoring them.

That’s not all.

Marco Rubio says that there’s someone in… pic.twitter.com/Q8FcrNp9M9

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 30, 2025

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The office in question is the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a program established in 2016 under former President Barack Obama.

Its original purpose was to coordinate messaging against terrorism and foreign propaganda.

However, Rubio said the office’s mission expanded under the Biden-Harris administration to include censorship of American citizens, especially conservatives, through collaboration with media and social platforms.

Rubio formally shut down the GEC earlier this month. In an April 16 statement, he announced the termination of what had been rebranded as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub in late 2024, just before the end of the Biden-Harris administration.

“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,” Rubio stated.

“This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America. That ends today.”

The Global Engagement Center has drawn criticism from conservative lawmakers and journalists in recent years.

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi reported that the GEC had developed blacklists during the COVID-19 pandemic and worked with subcontractors to suppress narratives that questioned official accounts.

According to Taibbi’s reporting, the GEC flagged accounts as “Russian personas and proxies” based on criteria such as suggesting COVID-19 was a manmade bioweapon, blaming research from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or claiming the CIA may have had involvement in the outbreak.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has also condemned the GEC.

In January 2023, Musk posted on X, calling the office “The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEC.”

He added, “They are a threat to our democracy.”

They are a threat to our democracy

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2023

In last week’s sub streams, I explained that the fight to end GEC is not over, and I told everyone the exact bureau within the State Department that GEC’s censorship staff and programs will migrate to if GEC is terminated. If we win Matrix 1, we will enter the Matrix 2 arc: pic.twitter.com/13j6rzdLwb

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) December 18, 2024

Musk later endorsed President Trump in the 2024 election and accepted a temporary role in the administration overseeing government efficiency initiatives.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment regarding which official was targeted but did not receive a response.

In late 2024, Congress opted not to renew funding for the GEC, and it was scheduled to be phased out on December 23.

However, before President Trump’s inauguration, the Biden-Harris administration shifted remaining staff and rebranded the office in a last-minute move, the New York Post reported.

With the office now permanently shuttered, Rubio emphasized that the government’s role is not to police speech but to protect constitutional freedoms.

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