Originally published on www.sayerji.substack.com
Another bombshell revelation emerges, thanks to investigative reporting by Paul Thacker
New whistleblower documents show Imran Ahmed wasn't merely lobbying the British government -- he was embedded in the development of its online speech policy, shaping meeting agendas, co-chairing policy roundtables, and structuring ministerial participation. A leaked Washington conference roster proves he convened the U.S. State Department, the White House, Congress, British diplomats, and the UN under one roof -- while his lawyers told a federal court he acted independently of government.
[Disclosure: The author is a named plaintiff in Finn v. Global Engagement Center (M.D. Fla., Case No. 3:25-cv-00543). This analysis draws on public court filings, leaked documents published by Paul Thacker at RealClearInvestigations, and a conference attendee list obtained by the author.]
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The Core Revelation
On February 18, investigative journalist Paul Thacker released whistleblower documents on the website Real Clear Investigations -- also published simultaneously in a 14-tweet thread -- that expose a simple, devastating fact: CCDH did not lobby the British government's speech-regulation apparatus. It co-authored it.
The leaked emails and meeting briefs show CCDH's CEO Imran Ahmed writing a government minister's agenda, co-chairing a government policy roundtable, and dictating the terms of ministerial participation -- while CCDH's lawyers simultaneously told a Florida federal court their client merely "published reports" and acted "independently."¹
A conference attendee list Paul Thacker obtained shows the coordination extended far beyond London. In the summer of 2024, CCDH convened over 100 participants from the U.S. State Department, the White House, multiple congressional offices, the British Embassy, the United Nations, and a Canadian MP -- all in one Washington room.²
This matters immediately because CCDH's motion to dismiss in our federal lawsuit argues that plaintiffs "do not allege that CCDH or Mr. Ahmed even communicated with the White House, the Surgeon General, or Meta, or any party mentioned" in the case.³ What follows is primary-source documentation of exactly those communications.
CCDH Rewrote the Government's Own Language
The most damning evidence is an email chain between CCDH and the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), spanning September 25 through November 8, 2024. It documents CCDH organizing a policy roundtable at a government building -- 110 Rochester Row -- to which the government minister was invited as a guest.
Here is the sequence:
The government's staff repeatedly asked CCDH for direction. On October 14: "Do you have any updates regarding others attendees/ suggested agenda?" On October 24: "Just following up on the below email to see if you had any info yet on attendees/suggested agenda?" The government was asking a foreign nonprofit what would be discussed at a meeting with its own minister.
Then came the most revealing exchange. On October 25, the Minister's office proposed centering the roundtable on "what more the Government and regulators can usefully do to deliver on the SOS's commitment to build on the OSA." That was the government's framing -- focused on delivering existing commitments.
CCDH proposed its own: "Could we suggest a focus on how best can we collectively monitor the impact the OSA is having and identify areas -- based on evidence -- of where further targeted interventions are needed?"
The government's language was about implementation. CCDH's was about expansion -- "further targeted interventions." CCDH's proposed language appears verbatim in the final government Meeting Brief prepared by DSIT for the Minister.⁴ The documentary record shows the revised framing making its way directly into the official agenda.
Ahmed is listed as a participant in the government-hosted roundtable at 110 Rochester Row. The Minister delivered remarks and then departed, while officials remained for further discussion regarding "opportunities for the online safety agenda under the new Labour government." Planning emails reflect coordination over the structure of the session, including how and when the Minister would contribute closing comments and the expectation that substantive discussion would continue afterward.
This was not a press conference. It was not public testimony. It was a closed-door policy meeting inside a government building, where CCDH helped shape the agenda, proposed the framing that appeared in the final brief, and remained in the room after the Minister departed as officials discussed enforcement priorities. The government's own Meeting Brief confirms the arrangement: "MRF and CCDH have arranged a policy roundtable… You were invited by them to attend and speak." When a government's own briefing document describes its minister as the guest at a nonprofit's meeting, the relationship between regulator and advocate has been inverted.
The Washington Summit
CCDH's government integration was not confined to London.
A conference attendee list obtained by investigative journalist Paul Thacker documents a private CCDH-organized event in Washington in the summer of 2024. It shows CCDH convened well over 100 attendees from across the U.S. and British governments, international organizations, and the full censorship-advocacy ecosystem. Here is who was in the room:
U.S. State Department -- at least two officials with @state.gov addresses, plus Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, Biden's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.
White House -- Anna Lenhart, Senior Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The same CCDH whose "Disinformation Dozen" report was cited by the White House press secretary to pressure platforms had a White House policy advisor at its private event.
Congress -- staffers from the offices of Senator Ben Ray Luján, Senator Peter Welch, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, and U.S. House staff. This is consistent with leaked CCDH documents listing "60 meetings on the Hill" as an organizational objective.⁵
British Embassy -- Annabel Graham, First Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, with an @fcdo.gov.uk address. Her title means she was the diplomatic interface between British domestic security policy and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance.
United Nations -- Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary-General for Communications -- the UN's top communications official.
Canadian Parliament -- Peter Julian, MP.
The censorship-industrial ecosystem in full -- Media Matters for America, GLAAD, Public Citizen, Center for Democracy and Technology, the Ford Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Microsoft, Accountable Tech, and dozens more.
CCDH itself deployed fifteen to twenty staffers. This was not a coalition event. CCDH organized it, staffed it, and set the agenda. Everyone else was invited into CCDH's room.
This was a coordination summit -- convened by a foreign nonprofit, attended by officials from three governments and the United Nations, held in Washington in the summer before the 2024 presidential election.
The 2-page list was extensive. We need citizen journalists to further investigate the list, and report back the relevant connections. Please download and share the list, and put your findings in the comments section below.
The Legal Contradiction
CCDH's motion to dismiss -- filed January 16, 2026, by Roberta Kaplan -- argues that CCDH acted independently, that it merely published reports, and that government actors decided "on their own" to take action.³
The documents tell a different story: Ahmed was in the room in London, writing the minister's agenda and co-chairing government roundtables. In Washington, he convened the very government officials, congressional staffers, White House advisors, and allied organizations whose subsequent "independent" actions CCDH's lawyers now characterize as unconnected parallel conduct.
The State Department's own administrative record in Ahmed v. Rubio already characterized Ahmed as "a key collaborator with the Biden Administration's effort to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens."⁶ Under Secretary Sarah Rogers called it "collusion with part of the American government."⁷
CCDH's legal team responded not by contesting the characterization, but by complaining that Rogers said it on a podcast.⁸ When your legal response to a government official calling your client a collaborator is not "that's factually wrong" but "she shouldn't have said it publicly," you are managing a narrative, not contesting a record.
The Closed Circuit
One structural detail completes the picture. CCDH board member Damian Collins led the parliamentary charge for the Online Safety Act. Ahmed was the first person to testify in its favor. Collins has since left Parliament and joined a law firm specializing in online speech regulation -- benefiting from the regulatory infrastructure he championed while serving on the board of the organization that designed it.⁹
That same Online Safety Act gives the British government power to impose massive fines on American companies -- including Apple, X, and Truth Social -- for violating UK hate speech rules. CCDH wasn't just pressuring platforms. It was building the legal infrastructure for a foreign government to directly regulate American expression, while its CEO sat at the drafting table.
[Learn more about how America is fighting back against draconian speech regulation in: Don't Tread on Me and in my lawsuit with five other plaintiffs here]
The Surveillance
When journalists began exposing this architecture, the response was not transparency. It was surveillance.
A leaked memo marked "STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL" reveals that Labour Together -- the organization that birthed CCDH -- hired PR firm APCO to investigate Paul Thacker and at least six other journalists probing the CCDH connection. The memo profiles Thacker, Matt Taibbi, and reporters from The Sunday Times, Business Insider, and UnHerd -- essentially every journalist who published substantive investigations into CCDH's origins.¹⁰
I am not writing about this architecture abstractly. Last year, while in the UK, British authorities attempted to arrest me -- an American journalist and friend and colleague of Secretary Kennedy -- in what appears to be a direct consequence of CCDH's defamatory "Disinformation Dozen" campaign. The same apparatus described in this article was pointed at me personally. [Learn more here]
Josh Simons, who commissioned the surveillance operation, attended the June meeting with Ahmed, sat at the November roundtable shaping the Online Safety Act's enforcement, and has since joined DSIT -- the department that regulates online speech.
This is not the behavior of an organization that merely publishes reports.
The Bottom Line
The evidence now assembled is straightforward:
CCDH was co-founded by Morgan McSweeney -- who resigned as the Prime Minister's chief of staff on February 8, two days after Part 3 of my Epstein files series exposed the organizational lineage.¹¹ While targeting American citizens through the "Disinformation Dozen" campaign, Ahmed was simultaneously embedding CCDH into the British government's regulatory infrastructure and convening international coalitions in Washington. When journalists exposed the operation, the parent organization surveilled them.
CCDH's lawyers ask a federal court to believe their client was merely exercising free speech -- publishing reports and hoping someone might notice.
The leaked documents show an organization that was functioning as the connective tissue between governments, platforms, and advocacy groups in a coordinated, transnational campaign to suppress the speech of named American citizens.
This is not free speech. This is the architecture of suppression -- and we now have the internal documents to prove it.
What You Can Do
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Endnotes
¹ Paul D. Thacker, "Leaked CCDH Documents Reveal Organization's Integration into UK Government Speech Policy," RealClearInvestigations, February 2026.
² Conference attendee list, CCDH-organized Washington event, summer 2024. Obtained by the author.
⁴ Email chain between CCDH/MRF and DSIT, September 25–November 8, 2024, published by Thacker.
⁵ Leaked CCDH internal documents from 2024 listed "60 meetings on the Hill" as an organizational objective.
⁶ Certified Administrative Record, Ahmed v. Rubio, Case No. 1:25-cv-10705 (S.D.N.Y.), Document 42, filed February 6, 2026.
⁷ Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers, interview on The DisInformation Chronicle podcast, January 2026.
⁸ CCDH Motion to Dismiss, Document 118, at ¶ 54.
⁹ Thacker, "Leaked CCDH Documents," RealClearInvestigations, February 2026.
¹⁰ Paul D. Thacker, "Brits Spied on Me, According to Memo Marked 'STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL,'" The DisInformation Chronicle, February 19, 2026.
¹¹ Morgan McSweeney resigned as Chief of Staff to PM Starmer on February 8, 2026 -- two days after publication of Part 3 of this series.
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