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This same leadership proceeded to wastefully form the Open Technology Fund as its own independent grantee with the help of USAGM senior management prior to the tenure of Trump-appointed leadership.

The Open Technology Fund’s goal is to provide funding to support the research, development, and implementation of Internet freedom technologies that circumvent censorship. OTF was formed under dubious circumstances by using consolidation rules to usurp the mission and funding of USAGM’s pre-existing Office of Internet Freedom (OIF), which funded far more diverse technologies with much greater transparency. OTF, however, operates with far less transparency and strictly restricts funding to “open source” technology. OTF does not support any technology with even partially “closed source” code, notwithstanding that such closed-source code would provide more protection against hacking.

Although OTF touts large user numbers, this could not be substantiated upon requests for information, and it was discovered by former senior USAGM leadership that OTF makes extremely small, insubstantial donations to much larger messaging applications and technology to bolster its unsubstantiated claims.“ Despite its vibrant self-lobbying and publicity efforts, OTF remains a wasteful and redundant boondoggle. Its grantee status was suspended by Trump-appointed USAGM leadership for a number of reasons, including noncompliance with its grant terms and for actions that resulted in several fraud and waste investigations.”

The OIF, which predates OTF, was historically under USAGM’s Office of Chief Strategy Officer and for years had been performing the same tasks as OTF within USAGM headquarters for the benefit of all USAGM broadcast networks. With much greater transparency, OIF succeeded with fewer staff while simultaneously fielding more diverse and robust technologies. Absent a meaningful organizational impact analysis to justify the wastefulness of the decision-making process, OTF usurped the entire OIF budget and was set up as anew grantee organization.

Exacerbating matters, OIF was shut down in order to provide massive grants to the opaque activities of OTF and its founding leadership, who went on a free-spending boondoggle for high-end Washington, D.C., office space, furnishings, and top salaries for its leadership team. Numerous career staff whistleblowers came forward to sound the alarm about OTF to Trumpappointed leadership, citing concerns about the OIG reports, wasteful spending, and other substantive performance matters.’® Nonetheless, the