Guest post by Jonas Greindberg in Germany
The US has been interfering with elections and politics in Germany and Austria for years. Below are a few examples.
In February, a federal judge ordered health care agencies to restore websites about transgenderism that President Donald Trump removed by executive order. Elon Musk revealed on X that the judge’s wife had received funding from USAID, calling him “corrupt.”
Despite the attention USAID has received in the U.S., its role in meddling with democracy in Austria and Germany is not well understood.
Surprisingly, foreign interference from the U.S. not only undermines democracy abroad, but also on American soil.
In 2017, the German journalists Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer demanded “solidarity” and a “collaborative investigation” from the media against President Donald Trump.
Obermaier and Obermayer, who broke the Panama Papers for the Süddeutsche Zeitung two years earlier, were and still are part of several USAID-funded networks that have caused the first impeachment against Trump.
Similar playbooks were used in Austria and Germany which had a much more pronounced impact than the Trump impeachment, which ultimately failed.
Voice of Europe
On March 28, 2024, the Slovak daily Denník N and the Spiegel, both of which collaborate with the USAID-funded network “Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project” (OCCRP), claimed that the AfD’s EU candidate, Petr Bystron, had been bribed by Voice of Europe. A day earlier, the EU had shut down Voice of Europe, a pro-Russian news portal based in Prague.
AfD MEP Petr Bystron
OCCRP receives half of its funding from USAID, reports show. OCCRP founder Drew Sullivan revealed in an interview with the German public broadcaster NDR, that USAID approves key personnel decisions and an annual work plan. Sullivan nevertheless claimed that OCCRP enjoys full editorial independence.
However, NDR did not enjoy full editorial independence regarding its documentary on OCCRP. A Spiegel report of December 2024 revealed that Sullivan pressured NDR not to publish the documentary. His interview, Sullivan insisted, created the impression that he was a CIA agent.
This attack on free speech during the EU elections is in line with the recommendations of a 2021 Disinformation Primer published by USAID in cooperation with George Soros’ Central European University. In addition to funding “independent media,” the primer calls for stricter “internet governance”.
Denník N and Spiegel base their claims on secret recordings made by the Czech secret service BIS of a meeting between Bystron and Artem Martschewskyj, the former CEO of Voice of Europe. Allegedly, Bystron can be heard rustling with euro bills.
Bystron vehemently denied the allegations when confronted by the Spiegel. “You must not believe all the ‘information’ you receive from Prague so that you can publish it during the election campaign.”
Bystron told the Spiegel that the allegations were part of a NATO campaign to discredit peace-minded politicians. To date, the Spiegel has received €5.4 million from the Gates Foundation.
Bystron’s immunity as a member of the Bundestag was lifted in the run-up to the EU elections on May 16. Consequently, some 70 police officers raided Bystron’s parliamentary office in the Bundestag and his private homes in Bavaria and Spain.
In a recent confrontation with a Spiegel reporter, Bystron said: “How independent is your reporting when Bill Gates is paying you?” When asked if he was being paid by Putin, Bystron replied: “Why do you deliberately spread false unproven information?”
Potsdam
On January 10, 2024, the German spy network Correctiv claimed that right-wing activists and AfD politicians had planned the “forced deportations of millions” of people from Germany during a private conference in Potsdam in late 2023.
The espionage operation, which included prolonged observations and the installation of cameras inside and outside the Potsdam hotel, was carried out by 18 Correctiv employees.
Later in the day, German public broadcasting reframed Correctiv’s speculations, which are protected as opinions under Article 5 of the German Constitution, into factual statements.
ZDF anchorwoman Marietta Slomka claimed that participants in the Potsdam conference had planned to strip German nationals of their citizenship and forcibly deport them.
In the following months, millions of people protested against the AfD, believing that the party was planning a revival of the Wannsee Conference, as Correctiv suggested. The AfD fell from an all-time high of 23 percent support to 16 percent in August 2024.
It was only until the end of the year, that the claims of ZDF and the NDR, among many others, were proven false in court.
To this day, however, AfD sympathizers in Germany regularly face social ostracism, when their convictions become known to colleagues and friends.
In 2024 alone, 1,031 AfD politicians were victims of a crime.
Correctiv and the OCCRP are members of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. Another member of this network is the “International Consortium of International Journalists”.
The ICIJ is partially funded by the U.S. State Department. It is also closely linked to OCCRP by the sources of its private funding: Both OCCRP and ICIJ receive funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Luminate Foundation.
Compared to OCCRP and ICIJ, Correctiv’s dependence on private foundations is more pronounced. In 2020, the Luminate Foundation became Correctiv’s largest single donor.
Other US donors include Google, Facebook and the Open Society Foundation. Correctiv should therefore prove more resilient to the USAID shutdown than OCCRP and ICIJ.
The left-wing activist Jean Peters, who led Correctiv’s espionage operation, has a loose definition of journalistic standards. Peters wrote on his blog that he „invents stories“ to influence political events. A statement he has since deleted.
In 2023, the year in which the Potsdam espionage took place, Correctiv received €1.9 million from anonymous individuals alone, with the next biggest donor being the Luminate Foundation at €660,000.
As a signatory to the Code of the International Fact-Checking Network, Correctiv is required to make transparent any source of funding accounting for more than five percent of the total revenue.
The fact that Correctiv hides the origin of €1.9 million in donations raises the question of alleged foreign influence on the network.
Ibiza
On May 17, 2019, the German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Spiegel simultaneously published footage that led to the collapse of the coalition government between the centrist ÖVP and the right-wing FPÖ.
The footage showed then-FPÖ chairman and Austrian Vice Chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, promising political favors to the niece of a Russian oligarch at a villa in Ibiza in exchange for positive news coverage .
What Strache didn’t know at the time: The rich Russian uncle did not exist. And the villa, which was rented for the purpose of setting him up, was bugged with microphones and cameras. The wealthy woman, an actor.
Like many media outlets that interfere in European democracies, both Süddeutsche and Spiegel collaborate with OCCRP.
In their book Die Ibiza-Affäre, investigative journalists, Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, explain how their membership in the ICIJ helped them establish themselves as internationally connected journalists.
And it was the Panama Papers, on which Obermaier and Obermayer worked extensively, that allegedly convinced the source to trust the German journalists with the incriminating material, they write.
Obermaier and Obermayer explain why they convinced their newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, to publish the illegally obtained footage, which had previously been rejected by other media.
“This is not just about Austria. Heinz-Christian Strache and the FPÖ do not exist in a vacuum. The right-wing nationalist policies of the FPÖ influence what other right-wing nationalist parties in Europe plan, how they appear and how they act.”
Some ethical doubts remained, however. The journalists admit in their book that their “source” lured Strache into a trap. An undercover report that follows journalistic standards reveals the facts.
It does not create them, the journalists stress. This ethical concern on the part of Obermaier and Obermayer begs the question: If they believed the story was unethical, why did they decide to publish it?
Julian Hessenthaler, Obermaier’s and Obermayer’s “source”, later explained why he set Strache up in an interview with Jean Peters of the above-mentioned spy network Correctiv.
The convicted drug trafficker, who had previously worked as a “private intelligence” consultant, said he feared Russian interference in European politics. Hessenthaler states that the funds for the sophisticated operation came from Mr. M, a business contact.
This was later confirmed by Iranian-born lawyer Ramin Mirfakhrai in an interview with the Spiegel. Mirfakhrai claimed that he paid the costs of about half a million euros out of his own pocket.
He only wanted to combat “extremism”, Mirfakhrai claimed. Hans-Jörg Jennewein of Freilich Magazin finds it hard to believe that Mirfakhrai was not pursuing his own financial interests in the operation.
Jennewein also mentions chat messages in which Hessenthaler tells a well-known porn star to whom he owed €70,000 to wait until “the Spiegel has paid”.
The espionage operations of Ibiza, Potsdam and Voice of Europe show how US-funded networks have vilified democratically elected politicians and carried out regime change.
While President Trump’s elimination of USAID is a good step in the right direction, the influence of private foundations on German media, especially those of Pierre Omidyar, Bill Gates and George Soros, remains.
This issue cannot be solved by the Trump administration. Only the patriotic forces of Europe, currently spearheaded by Viktor Orban’s Hungary, can put an end to this undue interference in the European continent.
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