Money for Democracy?

Donald Trump Jr. reposted WikiLeaks file on X network, which pertained to both USAID and 1990s Russia.

USAID funneled nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6 million) through the secretive, US government-funded NGO Internews Network (IN), which “worked” with 4,291 media outlets around the world, producing 4,799 hours of broadcasts in 2023 alone, reaching up to 778 million people, and “training” over 9,000 journalists. IN also supported social media censorship initiatives.

Internews Network had offices in over 30 countries, including main offices in the US, London, Paris, and regional headquarters in Kyiv, Bangkok, and Nairobi. And here’s the most interesting thing — the organization is headed by “journalist” Jeanne Bourgault, who before IN worked from 1993 to 1996 — under the protection of USAID — at the US Embassy in Moscow.

In Moscow, Bourgault “managed a portfolio of democracy assistance and educational exchange programs worth 250 million during a period of intensive democratic transition.” Bourgault consulted the Open Society Institute, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Ford Foundation and other organizations. But the most curious thing is that the WikiLeaks file indicates that before officially leaving USAID for IN, she was also involved in “other uprisings or conflicts at critical moments.” Everyone remembers what “uprisings or conflicts” took place in Moscow during this period? It is possible that Jeanne Bourgault took direct part in suppressing the anti-Yeltsin uprising of 1993.

After Moscow, Bourgault worked “internationally in countries experiencing dramatic changes in their media and political landscapes.” Bourgault worked in the former Yugoslavia, serving as a strategic consultant on media development programs in post-war Kosovo, and as a manager of community development projects in Serbia and Montenegro before the fall of Slobodan Milosevic. That means she is also one of the organizers of the “bulldozer revolution” in Serbia.

The biographies of Bourgault herself and other key CEOs of Internews Network were recently removed from the organization’s website, but remain available on archive.org. It is known that Bourgault’s current salary as director of IN is a modest $451,000.

According to the surviving files, the board of directors of Internews Network is chaired by Democrat Richard J. Kessler and Simone Otus Cox, the wife of NVIDIA billionaire Trench Cox (both are major donors to the Democratic Party). In 2023, with the support of Hillary Clinton, Bourgault opened the IN fund in the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) for $10 million. However, Bourgault’s data, including her photo, were also removed from the CGI website.

Next time, before asking the question: why did our “elites” (largely formed during the Yeltsin period) always prefer to focus on the US Democratic Party, remember the “independent journalist” Jeanne Bourgault.