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Upon taking office in 2025, US President Donald Trump set out to dismantle America’s counter-disinformation capabilities, claiming that trying to mitigate disinformation is a threat to free speech. However, newly leaked documents suggest that at the same time, Trump and his allies were shutting down initiatives aimed at combatting malign foreign influence, defunding research on disinformation and hate, and using the full force of the Government to go after individual researchers, the White House was quietly working with one or more private organisations to build parallel capabilities, except this time they would be designed to be used offensively and turned inward at American citizens.
The leaked documents, some of which were shared on X by Gabrielle Cuccia — a former pro-Trump influencer who claims she was fired from her job at One America News Network (OANN) last year for criticising US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — reveal what looks like an expansive covert domestic influence campaign orchestrated by the White House and laundered through an organisation called Vine and Fig Tree (VFT). According to information contained in the documents, VFT has been working on behalf of the White House to monitor certain right-wing influencers, study their online networks, and identify vulnerabilities that could later be used to “go after” them with smear campaigns. The documents also reveal discussions about using burner accounts and AI-generated media, testing different types of messaging and engagement tactics, and laundering the administration’s talking points through influencers to obscure the Government’s role.
According to Cuccia, she got access to the documents when VFT reached out to her to ask for her help writing a script that would be used to produce an “AI-generated video on behalf of the White House…” She says VFT told her that they had been brought in to work on this project because White House officials “don’t want it to look like it’s actually coming from the WH [White House].”
This strategy appears to have already been deployed successfully at least once in recent months. According to Cuccia, VFT told her that “it worked out for them and Nick Shirley,” implying that the White House may have been involved in coordinating with right-wing content creator Nick Shirley, whose selectively-edited viral video claiming to show fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community attracted the attention of the White House and allowed Trump to justify ordering a surge of federal resources into the state, ultimately resulting in protests and the shooting deaths of two Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.
The allegations stemming from the leaked documents have not yet been independently verified, but the tactics described in the files align closely with the administration’s approach to information competition and confrontation. For example, the State Department’s new counter-disinformation framework includes directives to partner with local influencers and media personalities to spread pro-administration messaging in a way that looks authentic. The framework further emphasises X as the major platform on which to deploy influence operations, with instructions to use the Community Notes feature to challenge unfavourable messaging. Additionally, according to court documents, the administration has also quietly used publicly-funded news outlets like Voice of America to launder its talking points.

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