6 minPolitics
House Panel Warns of Foreign 'Trojan Horses' as Activists Removed From Hearing
House Foreign Affairs Committee members say a network of activists, nonprofits and influencers is amplifying messages funded by foreign adversaries, and they are pushing for transparency about who pays for it.
Lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee are warning that a network of activists, nonprofits and social media influencers is helping carry the messages of foreign adversaries into American political life, and they say the answer is transparency about who is paying for it.
The warning came into sharp focus during a hearing titled «Trojan Horses: Covert Foreign Malign Influence Operations in America,» when CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and two fellow activists entered the hearing room and positioned themselves behind witnesses wearing T-shirts supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Communist Party of Cuba. About 30 minutes into the proceedings, South and Central Asia Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., halted the hearing and had Capitol Police escort them out.
Huizenga described the episode as political theater designed for an audience beyond the committee room. «They're coming in, trying to look like one thing, but we know that once they're inside the gates that those doors are going to spring open, and there's a whole other motivation for what they're trying to do,» he said. «This isn't about discourse. This is about disruption. It's all planned out. You see people in the crowd filming with their phones, getting ready. You knew something was going to happen because, all of a sudden, the phones would come out.»
At the center of the controversy is communist tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham, who married CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans in Jamaica in 2017, soon after directing $285 million to six pro-China, pro-communist, anti-American nonprofits in the United States, including CodePink, according to a Fox News Digital investigation. Lawmakers say the answer is transparency and following the money to expose who finances the alleged «Trojan horse.»
The phrase comes from the ancient Greek story of soldiers concealed inside a wooden horse presented to the city of Troy. Once the horse was taken behind the city's fortified walls, the soldiers emerged and opened the gates, destroying Troy. Huizenga and other committee members said the modern version is not made of wood but rather a network of ostensibly American voices that foreign governments and foreign-linked actors can fund, amplify or exploit.
Huizenga stressed that Americans can hold sincere beliefs while also having those messages funded or amplified by foreign actors without necessarily knowing it. He argued that the answer to foreign influence is exposing the origins of the messaging through transparency and robust debate. «Transparency. Transparency is the watchword,» he said. «We really need to make sure that people know not only the why, but the who is behind all this.»
Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Wash., said America's open political system creates opportunities for foreign governments to try to influence legitimate domestic debates through social media, universities and other institutions. «The American people need transparency and need to understand what is going on in these public policy discussions and whether it's podcast hosts, certain actors on social media or things going on our college campuses,» he said. «We need to know who's behind it and what their motivations are.»
Baumgartner pointed to «clear transparency on this issue» as a solution, adding that if evidence showed organizations were acting on behalf of foreign governments without complying with applicable disclosure laws, the matter could potentially be referred to the Justice Department, which oversees the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA. The law requires that people and organizations acting on behalf of foreign interests register with the Justice Department.
Inside the hearing room, Benjamin and her fellow CodePink activists offered a vivid illustration of the debate over how political messages are created and amplified. They sat directly behind the witnesses, placing their T-shirts in the sight line of the official committee cameras. Benjamin then turned toward a television monitor on the side of the hearing room displaying the official video feed. She pulled out her phone, zoomed in on the image of herself and a fellow activist appearing behind the witnesses and took photo after photo of the screen.
The episode captured the central tension running through the hearing: how the United States exposes genuine covert foreign influence without treating protected American political speech as foreign subversion. Lawmakers expressed concern about how the Communist Party of China, Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Communist Party of Cuba spread their propaganda and influence in the U.S. They said the goal is not to silence debate but to make sure the public knows who is behind the messages they see.
