Between scrubbing government websites of information about everything from vaccine efficacy to LGBT health matters and the ongoing war with higher education, the Trump administration seems to have a problem with freely available information that doesn’t align with its particular ideology. That war on knowledge appears to have extended to Wikipedia. Earlier this week, a Trump appointed attorney sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation accusing it of allowing the spread of propaganda and threatening its nonprofit status.
The letter—which was sent by Ed Martin, the acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, and first obtained by The Free Press—alleges that Wikipedia’s host organization may be “engaging in a series of activities that could violate its obligations under Section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code”—the law that allows the organization to operate as a tax-exempt nonprofit.
Martin accuses the Wikimedia Foundation of falling short of te requirements to maintain that status because, he claims, Wikipedia is “allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda,” and “permitting information manipulation on its platform, including the rewriting of key, historical events and biographical information of current and previous American leaders, as well as other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States.” He also claims that because the foundation’s board is made up of “primarily foreign nationals,” that it is “subverting the interests of American taxpayers.”
In order to quell these supposed concerns that read more like a thinly veiled threat to fall in line with the administration’s preferred version of history, Martin requested documents and responses to a slew of questions, including details about the organization’s safeguards to prevent propaganda and processes in place to prevent foreign influence campaigns. The Wikimedia Foundation has until May 15 to respond to the inquiry.
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