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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) released new evidence that the U.K.-based pro-censorship organization Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and its leadership, including CEO Imran Ahmed, appear to have engaged in coordinated efforts to censor American citizens’ speech and are part of a foreign influence operation to interfere with U.S. elections.
Based on this new evidence, AFL has also now formally requested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate whether CCDH’s U.S. operation and leadership are “agents of a foreign principal” that must comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
CCDH is a nonprofit organization established and predominantly staffed in the U.K. that has promoted unconstitutional censorship on social media platforms for years. In London, it shares an address with “Labour Together,” a U.K. Labour Party-associated think tank that met with Kamala Harris’s campaign at the DNC in Chicago and has promoted unconstitutional censorship on social media platforms for years.
According to CCDH, its “mission is to protect human rights and civil liberties online.” While CCDH is registered to operate in the United States as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, there is no material separation between it and the original entity of the same name established in the United Kingdom.
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CCDH has been described as “[a] cut-out engaged in brazen smearing, attacking of dissenting views, deplatforming, censoring and pro-active shrinkage of the Overton window [by] strategically conflating serious voices with the fringes, mixing them together to isolate genuine actors and squash dissent.”
The leadership of CCDH includes:
Imran Ahmed, who sits on the boards and serves as CEO of both CCDH U.S. and U.K. Ahmed, formerly worked for Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN), which was later incorporated into CCDH. Ahmed takes credit for the so-called “defund racism” campaign associated with Black Lives Matter to force Google to remove their ads from The Federalist and ZeroHedge. CCDH describes Ahmed as an “authority on social and psychological malignancies on social media, such as identity-based hate, extremism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories on social media for years.” Simon Clark, Chair of the CCDH Board, who also sits on the board of CCDH U.K, was a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Lab, which colluded with other entities involved in the so-called “Election Integrity Partnership” and “Virality Project” to conspire with the federal government and censor speech on social media. In May 2023, AFL filed a landmark federal class-action lawsuit against the Atlantic Council and other private entities that conspired with the federal government to censor speech. Also, as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Clark led the work to combat “white supremacy” that shaped the White House’s Domestic Terrorism strategy. Eva Hartshorn-Sanders, CCDH’s former Head of Policy, advocated for policies given to her by the CCDH U.K. and the U.K. Labour Party. As Head of Policy, Hartshorn-Sanders emailed Robert Silvers — the DHS Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans — to “discuss research that [CCDH] released and coming up in the next couple of weeks, and…to hear about work that [DHS] ha[s] underway.” By September 2022, CCDH was directly meeting with officials from the White House, the National Safety Council, and the Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism (CT), updating them with CCDH’s latest findings. In March 2023, the White House published its “Initial Blueprint for the White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse,” highlighting federal research funding and a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement action against a gaming platform which Hartshorn-Sanders said CCDH was “able to feed in research and policy recommendations for its development.” Thomas Conrad Brookes, board member of CCDH U.S. and CCDH U.K., is a British national residing in Belgium. He is the CEO of the Meliore Foundation — the leading organization focused on funding global strategic communications. Brookes is also the CEO of the Global Strategic Communications Council, working at the highest levels of the “climate change” movement, even with Greta Thunberg. Kristy Jean McNeill, a board member of CCDH U.S. who was also recently on the board of CCDH U.K., is the acting Scottish Labour and Co-operative member of Parliament for Midlothian and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland. Aleen Keshishian, a CCDH U.S. board member, is the founder and CEO of Lighthouse Management + Media, a firm known for representing many Hollywood celebrities, including Jennifer Aniston, Selena Gomez, and Olivia Rodrigo. Keshishian apparently “directly or indirectly” engaged in “informing, advising, or in any way representing” CCDH U.K. or the U.K. Labour Party “in the public relations matter pertaining to” foreign interests in internet censorship policies. Zack Morgenroth, also a CCDH U.S. board member, is a managing partner at Lighthouse Management + Media, whose client, Olivia Rodrigo, spoke at the White House on July 14, 2021, to pressure young people to receive the COVID-19 shot. The next day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated that the Biden-Harris White House was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook.” Damian Collins, a member of the CCDH U.K. board, was a former Member of Parliament of the U.K. and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Tech and Digital Economy at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, & Sport, alongside Lord Jonathan Oates, a sitting member of the House of Lords.
CCDH Activities in the United States
On March 24, 2021, the CCDH published a report labeling a group of influential COVID-19 lockdown critics as “the Disinformation Dozen,” explicitly calling for these Americans, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be de-platformed. After the CCDH report, twelve attorney generals, all Democrats, sent a letter on the same day to the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook citing the CCDH report, seeking to censor the views of those American citizens. To expose the extent of CCDH’s pernicious power on the U.S. government, AFL filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on July 20, 2023, to multiple federal government agencies. On August 16, 2023, AFL followed up with additional requests to the twelve state attorneys general who signed onto the March 24, 2021 letter.
Through AFL’s investigation, it has been uncovered that, on March 16, 2021, Rowan Kane, Counselor to the Connecticut Attorney General and Deputy Director of Policy, had circulated an earlier draft of the letter citing the CCDH report before the report was published. Moreover, he asked the other state attorneys general offices for “confirmation of sign-on by COB Tuesday, 3/23” — one day before the CCDH report would be published. The evidence suggests that CCDH provided a non-public version of its report to the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office before its final publication and potentially coordinated with that office in drafting the letter.
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