An international non-government organization (NGO) comprised of journalists in six countries, intimately involved in the first Democrat-backed impeachment of President Donald J. Trump, has been exposed as receiving half of its funding from the United States Department of State. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)—co-founded by entrepreneur Drew Sullivan—saw 52 percent of the funds it spent between 2014 and 2023 funneled to it by the U.S. federal government, according to a report published by Drop Site.
Concerningly, it appears U.S. taxpayer dollars likely contributed to the OCCRP’s investigation into former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani‘s political work in Ukraine. These activities were cited no fewer than four times in the whistleblower letter that sparked the first impeachment of President Donald J. Trump in 2019. Trump was ultimately acquitted of the charges by the U.S. Senate.
U.S. TAXPAYER FUNDS.
The report notes that while the OCCRP—a massive NGO heavily involved in corruption reporting in Eastern Europe and Russia—has disclosed that it receives some government funding, the exact amounts were previously not publicly known. Since the organization’s founding, the U.S. government has contributed $47 million to its budget and is committed to granting OCCRP an additional $12 million.
In addition to American government funding, OCCRP has received an estimated $15 million from the governments of Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands over the last decade. OCCRP is also backed by private donors, including left-wing billionaire George Soros‘s Open Society Foundations.
EXTENSIVE MEDIA NETWORK.
The OCCRP routinely collaborates with state and corporate media worldwide. These include Germany’s public broadcaster NDR and Der Spiegel, Rolling Stone magazine and The Washington Post in the United States, The Guardian and The Times in the United Kingdom, France’s Le Monde, and Australia’s Dossier magazine, among many others.
Additionally, much of the OCCRP’s U.S. government-backed work has focused on countering Russian media narratives, raising concerns that the organization is simply spreading its own propaganda to counter that pushed by the Russian government. Numerous OCCRP reports have been cited as the basis for U.S. government actions against individuals, companies, and governments around the globe.
Like many NGOs, OCCRP attempts to portray itself as nonpartisan. However, its co-founder, Drew Sullivan, has a lengthy social media track record of boosting partisan political narratives. Recently, Sullivan has amplified claims that President-elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, sports far-right Christian nationalist tattoos.
The National Pulse has reported that the tattoo in question is a Jerusalem Cross associated with the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the modern country of Georgia.
