By Didi Rankovic – Reclaim The Net
America First Legal (AFL) has announced that it has filed a formal complaint, based on new evidence, urging an investigation into the activities of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
This UK-based group has been accused of direct involvement in online censorship, including in the US, notably in the affair around the “naming and shaming” of the supposed Covid “Disinformation Dozen” – which is why the AFL’s complaint has now been submitted to the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
The key question that AFL wants to be answered is whether those behind CCDH should be treated as “agents of a foreign principal” who took on the role of stifling free speech in the US.
Such a designation of the group, if confirmed, would be in line with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
We obtained a copy of the request for you here.
AFL notes that in the UK, CCDH “shares an address with Labour Together, a UK Labour Party-associated think tank that met with Kamala Harris’s campaign at the DNC in Chicago.”
Those AFL wants investigated include CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed, while a press release names other key people as Chair of the CCDH Board Simon Clark, CCDH’s former Head of Policy Eva Hartshorn-Sanders, board member of CCDH US and UK Thomas Conrad Brookes (US citizen who lives in Belgium), CCDH US Board members Kristy Jean McNeill, Aleen Keshishian, Zack Morgenroth, and CCDH UK Board member Damian Collins.
Simon Clark is described as colluding to censor online speech with the US government as a former resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Lab (part of Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) and Virality Project).
The Atlantic Council has already been sued by AFL in a federal class action alleging “conspiracy with the federal government to censor speech.”
Eva Hartshorn-Sanders, meanwhile, is said to have “advocated for policies given to her by the CCDH UK and the UK Labour Party.”
Aleen Keshishian is the founder and CEO of Lighthouse Management + Media, which represents a number of Hollywood celebrities, AFL said.
The request for a DOJ investigation cites CCDH’s description of its activities as being in the service of protecting human and civil liberties on the internet – but also, the critics blasting it as engaged in “brazen smearing, attacking of dissenting views, deplatforming, censoring” dissenting voices.
AFL at the same time states that although CCDH is registered in the UK as a non-profit, there is in fact “no material separation between it and the original entity of the same name established in the United Kingdom.”
“Our investigation has uncovered shocking details about a foreign organization’s influence over the Biden-Harris Administration and numerous state governments,” commented AFL Legal Executive Director Gene Hamilton.
According to him, this was “not just any influence – their aim and stated goals appear to be to stop Americans from exercising a fundamental right guaranteed against governmental interference by the First Amendment.”
“And for nearly four years, the Biden-Harris DOJ appears to have looked the other way. The Biden-Harris DOJ is now on notice. The time to investigate is now,” Hamilton said.