Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a meeting of President Donald Trump's cabinet on April 30 that an unnamed official present at the meeting was the subject of a Biden State Department dossier that encouraged social media disinformation about them.

The administration has not revealed the identity of the individual despite numerous inquiries by the press.

Back on April 30, Rubio said, "We are going to be turning over these dossiers to the individuals, and they’ll decide whether they want to disclose it or not."

A now-dissolved office in the State Department that was known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC) compiled a number of  dossiers on Americans in order to censor them, including at least one member of the Trump cabinet.

"We have these dossiers"

"We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans," Rubio said during the meeting. "And, by the way, I'm not going to say who it is. I'll leave it up to them. There's at least one person at this table today who had a dossier in that building of social media posts to identify them as purveyors of disinformation. We have these dossiers. We are going to be turning those over to these individuals."

At the time, Vice President J.D. Vance joked, "Was it me or Elon (Musk)? We can follow up when the media is gone," which drew laughter from those present.

"But just think about that. The Department of State of the United States had set up an office to monitor the social media posts and commentary of American citizens, to identify them as vectors of disinformation," Rubio continued. "When we know that the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency."

Elon Musk had posted about the GEC back in 2023--before he endorsed Trump and joined the administration.

"The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEC," Musk posted to X. "They are a threat to our democracy."

GEC defunded

Rubio also blasted the office in interviews both before and after he joined the Trump cabinet.

The GEC tried to deny that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak in 2020 and persisted in that story until the Biden administration finally had to admit years later that it probably was.

In 2024, Congress defunded the GEC and it was scheduled to terminate in December 2024.

At the last second, Biden reshuffled staffers and rebranded the office the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub just days before Trump's inauguration.

In April, Rubio announced that the office would officially close.