A House committee revealed Friday that the Pentagon, other U.S. agencies and the European Union — except the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — has funded a for-profit “fact-checking” firm that blacklisted The Post.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote a letter to the company NewsGuard demanding more information about the public-private partnership that last year led to the State Department sued by conservative outlets which were labeled as more “risky” than their liberal counterparts.

NewsGuard has briefed committee staff on contracts they had with the Department of Defense in 2021, including the Cyber ​​National Mission Force within the US Cyber ​​Command; The State Department and its Global Engagement Center; and the EU’s joint research centre.

“The committee is writing today to seek additional documents and communications from NewsGuard related to all past and current contracts with or grants administered by federal government agencies or any other government entity, including foreign governments,” Comer informed NewsGuard CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz.

“The protection of the rights of American citizens is paramount, and attempts by government actors to infringe on those rights are dangerous and misguided,” the chairman warned.

The oversight panel in June opened its investigation into NewsGuard’s apparent participation in a government-funded “censorship campaign” to allegedly discredit and even demonetize news outlets by sharing its trustworthiness ratings with advertisers.

Comer also expressed concern that NewsGuard employees are sharing social media posts showing left-leaning bias, in violation of company policies, and that the company is suppressing “misinformation” by disadvantaged outlets — which in at least one case included a published academic study on the failure of lockdowns during the covid-19 pandemic.

“These extensive contacts with various government agencies are taking place as the government rapidly expands into the sphere of censorship,” the chairman wrote. “For example, a search of government grants and contracts from 2016 to 2023 found that there were 538 separate grants and 36 different government contracts specifically to address ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation.’

The right-wing websites Daily Wire and Federalist filed a civil complaint against the State Department in December 2023 for allegedly using taxpayer dollars to fund companies such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), smearing the outlets as “purveyors” of disinformation. “

Both companies have relationships with social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, as well as advertisers such as Dell Technologies, ExxonMobil and Nike, raising concerns about how their “disinformation” is rated would affect the business.

In 2022, GDI distributed a “Disinformation Risk Assessment” that ranked the “riskiest” sites for factual news such as the Federalist, Daily Wire, Newsmax, American Conservative, Reason Magazine, and the New York Post, among others.

The New York Times and Washington Post ranked it among the “least risky”.

In a statement Friday, Crovitz said: “When the Trump administration first asked us for our data and insights on hostile foreign government disinformation campaigns in 2020, we entered into agreements with them on the condition that such work be strictly limited to hostile government disinformation, not American publishers. We’re proud that NewsGuard’s data and analytics have helped defend Western democracies against Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation. NewsGuard was created as a transparent alternative to censorship by governments or big tech companies, and we don’t censor any content.”

The 2020 and 2024 elections have brought so-called “anti-disinformation” and “anti-disinformation” efforts to the fore — with The Post’s bombshell scoop on Hunter Biden’s laptop. mislabeled a Russian plant by then-candidate Joe Biden.

Some Democrats have since suggested that the only way to defeat the rollback of their policy is to gut the First Amendment.

President Biden’s ex-climate envoy John Kerry even called the constitutional freedom “a large block” to prevent people from believing the “wrong” kind of things.

“You know, there’s a lot of discussion now about how to curb these entities to ensure that you will have some accountability for the facts,” Kerry told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“But look, if people just go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a big block to being able to just, you know , hammer it out of existence, he said.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, too downplayed freedom of expression during a 2022 appearance on MSNBC’s “The Reid Out.”

– I think we have to push back on this. There is no guarantee of freedom of speech about misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy,” the Minnesota governor incorrectly said.

Comer has asked NewsGuard to provide by Nov. 8 all records of his contracts, grants or other work with the Pentagon, the State Department and other federal agencies or departments.