SUMMARY
- Morgan McSweeney is the founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit with UK and US offices that successfully censored Robert F. Kennedy Jr in 2021, and sought to “kill Musk’s Twitter” in 2024.
- The US State Department has sought to deport CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed over his role in the censorship of Americans.
- McSweeney has been the most trusted advisor of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer throughout his rise to power and premiership.
- Taking responsibility for his role in the appointment of Jeffrey Epstein associated Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US, McSweeney recently resigned from his role as Starmer’s chief of staff.
- Following his resignation, further scandal emerged: McSweeney’s organization, Labour Together, paid a US PR firm to spy on and concoct false claims of Russian influence regarding journalists in the UK and US, prompting Starmer to launch an inquiry.
- The twin scandals look set to bring an end to the career of someone who has played a pivotal role in the transatlantic censorship industry.
Morgan McSweeney resigned on February 8, 2026 from his role as chief of staff to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, stepping down amid an escalating political crisis for the UK’s ruling Labour party.
McSweeney said he was taking “full responsibility” for urging Starmer to appoint Peter Mandelson as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States, despite his foreknowledge of Mandelson’s connection to convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, which have now come to light with the release of the Epstein Files.
The scandal engulfing the UK Prime Minister and his Labour party was further aggravated by revelations about the organization Labour Together, which McSweeney founded and led, and which supported Keir Starmer in his rise to the leadership.
According to material published by Racket News and confirmed by The Times, Labour Together worked with an American PR firm called APCO Worldwide to spy on both American and British journalists, including Racket’s Matt Taibbi and The Times’ Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke. APCO then sought to discredit the journalists by falsely connecting them to Russian influence operations, in reports that were subsequently shared with the UK’s top spy agency GCHQ — the country’s equivalent of the NSA.
Keir Starmer has called the accusations against Labour Together – the same organization that helped him rise to power – “very serious,” and has Keir Starmer orders investigation into Labour Together claims.
The double-whammy of scandals has for now brought an end to the career of McSweeney, the man who did more than anyone to bring Starmer to power — and who worked tirelessly to censor his political opponents in both the UK and the US, including founding a Transatlantic censorship organization whose stated goal was to “kill Musk’s Twitter.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is a UK-US nonprofit founded by Morgan McSweeney and Imran Ahmed in 2018. Much like Labour Together, its original goal was to help Keir Starmer ascend to power. In the first instance, this involved undermining then-leader Jeremy Corbyn, a populist leftist and Starmer’s chief internal rival. It also targeted voices of the populist right in the UK, such as journalist and commentator Katie Hopkins.
As early as 2020, CCDH was holding meetings with Twitter staff demanding the removal of Hopkins from the platform. Other objectives included demanding social media platforms censor key conservative narratives on social media, including any mention of the great replacement — the population-replacement level mass immigration occurring in most western countries.
CCDH quickly turned its attention across the Atlantic, setting up an office in Washington DC and networking with the Biden State Department and key Democrat legislators.
Its influence grew rapidly.
By 2021, its reports were being cited by President Biden. The Biden White House pressured social media platforms to censor twelve users identified as a “disinformation dozen” on COVID-19 commentary, among whom was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. RFK Jr. would go on to become Biden’s top primary opponent before running as an independent, before joining the MAGA movement and becoming HHS secretary.
The Biden administration’s use of CCDH’s research become a key point in Missouri v. Biden, the lawsuit that targeted the government’s role in the online censorship of Americans. It also became grounds for the House Judiciary Committee to subpoena CCDH.
On top of this, the now-shuttered Global Engagement Center at the State Department instructed its employees to pay attention to CCDH’s research, according to internal emails obtained by America First Legal.
By 2024, per internal emails, one item emerged as its top priority — “Kill Musk’s Twitter.”
CCDH built inroads with influential lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including former Democrat head of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who played a leading role in panics over “disinformation.” Jenna Galper, formerly a senior communications advisor for Rep. Schiff, currently works for CCDH’s policy team.
In May 2022, she promoted CCDH’s May 2022 Global Summit to Address Online Harms and Misinformation.
In December 2022, Rep. Schiff wrote a letter urging X CEO Elon Musk to combat rising “hate speech” on the platform, citing research from CCDH. Schiff, along with Reps. Lori Trahan (D-MA) and Sean Casten (D-IL), in August 2023 sent a letter to Musk, pushing back against Musk’s lawsuit against CCDH.
In September 2024 CCDH document cites a Schiff-sponsored bill, the Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act, as a bipartisan bill to strengthen transparency requirements for social media companies.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) office has led much of the left’s tech policy; her office has been invited CCDH’s “Kill Musk’s Twitter” meetings. Klobuchar is a prominent anti-Elon Musk Democrat.
Klobuchar is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, and might be considered the most powerful Democrat on technology policy.
The Minnesota Democrat in 2019 introduced the Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy Act, which would establish a censorship program at the Department of Education. In 2021, she proposed a bill to crack down on alleged vaccine misinformation and sent a letter to CEOs referencing CCDH’s “disinformation dozen” report, which noted that 12 people were most responsible for the proliferation of alleged vaccine misinformation.
Security State Ties
The fact that McSweeney’s Labour Together group shared its reports on targeted journalists (together with fabricated claims of links to Russia) with the UK spy agency GCHQ fits a pattern established by the CCDH – close ties with the intelligence community.
CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed currently sits on the Council for a Responsible Social Media, a bipartisan group that aims to devise social media content policy.
The Council includes major national security officials, including:
- Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Defense, director of the CIA, White House chief of staff, and congressman
- Bill Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and US Navy Admiral
- Michael Rogers, former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), and US Navy Admiral
- Nicole Tisdale, former director of the National Security Council
- Tom Wheeler, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who led the Obama-era net neutrality regulations through the agency
- R.P. Eddy, CEO of Ergo and former director of the White House National Security Council
Nicholas Penniman is the CEO of Issue One; he and his father were top investors of Newsguard, and his father currently sits on the board of directors of Newsguard.
Issue One also leads the National Council on Election Integrity, which touted that the council led to the creation of the US House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Prominent members of the National Council on Election Integrity include:
- Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security
- Dan Coats, the former director of intelligence and senator from Indiana
- Chuck Hagel, former Secretary of Defense
Jamie Neikrie, the legislative director for the Council for a Responsible Social Media, was listed in the “Kill Musk Twitter” documents as an invitee to CCDH’s Washington D.C. gala.
Shaping the Online Safety Act
It’s no surprise that Keir Starmer, who considered CCDH founder McSweeney his closest aide, has waged the most aggressive campaign aimed at curtailing free speech on American platforms. Starmer seems to share CCDH’s wish to “kill Musk’s Twitter,” recently contemplating a joint UK-Canada-Australia ban against Elon Musk’s X.
CCDH was also instrumental in the creation of the Online Safety Act, and the UK’s Online Harms framework that preceded it. The Online Safety Act, as FFO has extensively detailed, has emerged as one of the major international threats to American free speech online.
CCDH research was frequently cited in parliamentary debates, media coverage, and by civil society groups pressing for stronger regulatory intervention. By framing online harms as a public health and safety crisis—particularly around COVID-19 and election integrity—CCDH contributed to the momentum behind proposals that would impose statutory duties of care on platforms.
As the Online Harms framework evolved into the Online Safety Act, CCDH continued to advocate for robust enforcement powers for regulators and stricter platform accountability. The organization publicly supported measures requiring companies to proactively remove harmful content, conduct risk assessments, and face significant fines for noncompliance.
While CCDH did not draft the legislation, its campaigns and policy engagement aligned closely with provisions ultimately adopted in the Act, including expanded oversight by Ofcom and stronger obligations on large platforms. Supporters argue CCDH helped spotlight genuine online abuses that required systemic solutions, while critics contend its research and advocacy encouraged broad speech restrictions that risk overreach and collateral censorship.
influence not just with the current Labour Prime Minister, but also with the leadership of Starmer’s opposition in the Conservative party. Kami Badenoch, current leader of the Conservatives, praised CCDH’s work on “anti-Muslim hate” while she was a minister in the previous Conservative government.
CCDH’s board includes Damian Collins MP, who led the previous Conservative government’s efforts to regulate so-called “online harms.” Collins served as the former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Tech and Digital Economy at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS). He left his post in October 2022. He also served as the chair of the DCMS committee from 2016 to 2019.
Collins also met with the CCDH while he was drafting the government’s Online Safety Bill” as part of “stakeholder engagement.”
In October 2024, Collins joined Orbis Business Intelligence as a non-executive director; the founder of Orbis is none other than Christopher Steele, the creator of the Steele dossier against former President Donald Trump.
Collins has frequently commented on the need for social media companies to take action against content that allegedly incites violence and harassment.
