UK NGO sued over US ‘election meddling’

The Center for Countering Digital Hate has been accused of FARA violations.

The UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has colluded with Washington to censor Americans and worked to influence the current presidential election on behalf of Democrats as an unregistered foreign agent, America First Legal has alleged.

The pro-Republican legal group has formally requested the US Department of Justice to investigate CCDH as “agents of a foreign principal” that must comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

“Our investigation has uncovered shocking details about a foreign organization’s influence over the Biden-Harris Administration and numerous state governments,” AFL’s Gene Hamilton said in a statement on Thursday, claiming that the group’s stated goals “appear to be to stop Americans from exercising a fundamental right guaranteed against governmental interference by the First Amendment.”

According to the AFL, CCDH has “promoted unconstitutional censorship on social media platforms for years.” Its CEO, Imran Ahmed, has taken credit for the so-called “defund racism” campaign that pressured Google to remove advertising from outlets such as the Federalist and ZeroHedge, the group said.

While the CCDH claims its mission is “to protect human rights and civil liberties online,” in practice it engages in deplatforming, censorship and suppression of dissent, AFL said.

The CCDH was founded by Morgan McSweeney, chief of staff to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and former director of Labour Together, a think tank closely associated with Starmer’s Labour Party. Labour Together has been advising US Vice President Kamala Harris’ election campaign, and more than 100 Labour Party activists are currently campaigning for Harris in the US. The two outfits share the same address in London.

AFL accused CCDH of having worked with the White House and the Democrats in 2021 to censor American citizens, including former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, over alleged “disinformation” about Covid-19.

On March 24 that year, the CCDH published a report labeling a group of influential lockdown critics as “the Disinformation Dozen,” calling for them to be de-platformed. Attorneys general of 12 US states, all Democrats, then sent a letter to the CEOs of Twitter (now X) and Facebook, citing the CCDH report and demanding censorship of these Americans. However, the CCDH was in contact with the Connecticut AG’s office ahead of the report’s publication and “potentially coordinated” in drafting the letter, the AFL alleged.

AFL also noted that CCDH board chair Simon Clark is a former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Lab and the Center for American Progress. AFL has filed a class action suit against the Atlantic Council for allegedly conspiring with the Biden-Harris administration to censor speech in the US.

Internal CCDH documents leaked earlier this month showed the group sought to “kill” Elon Musk’s X as its top annual priority, by focusing on advertising and triggering regulatory action in the UK and the EU.