Set up in 2024, the Knight-Georgetown Institute is a relatively new addition to the global maze of “counter-disinformation” hubs working to influence the design and content moderation practices of social media platforms. As FFO recently exposed, the Institute aims to fight “toxicity” and “disinformation” in part by connecting disinformation researchers to lawmakers — it is already shopping a toolkit to state legislators to guide the regulation of social media feeds.
It is not the first such project from the Knight Foundation, which has spent over $107 million since 2016 to fight “disinformation” online, including $6.9 million aimed at swing states in 2024 — to “fortify the election,” in Knight’s own words.
The KGI is notable for some of the individuals who sit on its 14-man Steering Council. Members include some well-known former occupants of key federal government roles.
James Baker
Baker is well-known for serving as the FBI’s general counsel during Russiagate, who later joined Twitter before being dismissed by new owner Elon Musk for allegedly suppressing the Twitter Files.
Before then, he served in the Justice Department’s (DOJ) Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) to handle the DOJ’s requests for surveillance authorizations.
During his time at the Justice Department, Baker testified before congress during the Clinton and George W. Bush administration’s defending the PATRIOT Act before the House Judiciary Committee.
The producer of PBS Frontline referred to Baker as “Mr. FISA himself,” referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key surveillance legislation. Rick Young, the producer, noted that Baker admitted that they did not even approach the FISA Court to make the National Security Agency’s warrantless program work within the confines of the FISA Court until 2006. Some federal judges have ruled that the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program violated the Fourth Amendment.
Baker also led the FBI’s fight with Apple to break its iOS encryption to obtain information from one of the perpetrators of the San Bernandino, California terrorist attack.
In 2014, Baker was appointed general counsel of the FBI, who later became one of then-FBI Director James Comey’s closest confidants.
Comey relied on Baker to oversee the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, which was reportedly used for classified, official use during her time as Secretary of State. Baker had also led the investigation into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign over allegations that Russia had tried to interfere in the election.
After Trump pressed Comey to say publicly he was not under investigation, Baker advised against it, believing that the FBI would have to investigate alleged ties between Russia and Trump.
In 2021, Special Counsel John Durham, who was tasked by Trump’s Justice Department to probe the Russia investigation, charged lawyer Michael Sussman with making a false statement to then-FBI General Counsel Baker after he had failed to disclose he was working for multiple clients, including the Hillary Clinton campaign.
House Republicans during Trump’s first term in office accused Baker of being the source of leaks about the Russia Steele dossier that was compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele.
When leaving the Bureau in 2018, Comey said Baker “represents the best of the Department of Justice and the FBI.” Comey added, “He has protected the country and the rule of law throughout his career and leaves an inspiring legacy of service. He is what we should all hope our kids become, a person of integrity.”
Nahiba Syed
Nahiba Syed serves as the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes trustworthy artificial intelligence to advocate for a more “open, equitable internet.”
When serving as BuzzFeed’s vice president of legal and associate general counsel, she backed BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith’s decision to publish the Steele Dossier.
She contended, like Smith, that the dossier had been circulating around Washington, DC outlets and that it needed to be published.
Syed said, “Everyone knew it existed, but no one was publishing it. Ben didn’t think it was right that there was this thing that all the gatekeepers of information knew but that the public didn’t know about.”
She defended the outlet against a defamation lawsuit by a Russian entrepreneur that was named in the story and the Steele Dossier.
She has frequently attacked Republicans and President Donald Trump on X.
In December 2017, she quoted someone that stated, “Donald Trump is our first African dictator.”
She reposted an X user that compared Trump to President Richard Nixon as he faced the Watergate scandal, stating, “Just gonna start posting every night that Kay Graham published the second tranche of Pentagon Papers in the middle of an IPO, at the same time Nixon was threatening to pull her FCC licenses.”
She is now the CEO of a tech-oriented news outlet, the Markup, which was funded by $23 million in grants, primarily from the Ford Foundation, Luminate, as well as Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s foundation.
Alondra Nelson
Nelson previously served as deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), where she worked to advance equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
White House publications from 2022 found that the Biden administration directed Nelson’s OSTP to coordinate the sprawling, federal government-wide effort to crack down on misinformation, spanning 26 agencies, 14 universities, and over 20 NGOs.
During Nelson’s tenure, she was tasked with exploring what it would take to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC), a digital currency controlled by the government that some have criticized would create terrifyingly new levels of surveillance over Americans’ financial life.
Nelson is also a supporter of the controversial field of DEI: she said in a statement in March 2022 that OSTP would examine the climate impacts of digital assets and ensure that digital asset innovation “prioritizes equity, inclusion, and other American values.”
She wrote a book in 2016, The Social Life of DNA, that discussed how genetic testing could help trace lineages and ultimately may serve as a tool for reparations.
She now serves as a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, where she leads the Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab, a prestigious think tank in Princeton, New Jersey that housed Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
In May 2025, she resigned from her positions at the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council, explaining her reasoning in a Time op-ed. In the op-ed, she accused the Trump administration of “creeping normalization of authoritarian approaches” to academic freedom.
John Sands
The Knight Foundation in May promoted Sands to serve as the vice president for Information and Society.
Sands joined the Knight Foundation in 2019 and before his recent promotion, served as the senior director for media and democracy, where he led more than $124 million in grantmaking to back policy research on information and technology “in the context of our democracy.”
He previously led the Knight Foundation’s yearslong Trust, Media, and Democracy research partnership with Gallup.
The Information and Society provides grantmaking and it also focuses on developing strategic partnerships with key stakeholders. The program leads the Knight Research Network, the Pew-Knight Initiative, to understand how Americans consume civic information, as well as the Knight Free Expression Research Series, which is an over two decade survey of public attitudes towards free speech, with an emphasis on American youth.
In October 2020, ahead of the presidential election, Sands wrote about the Knight Foundation’s $3 million in new projects to help journalists combat misinformation. He specifically noted that surveys blame President Donald Trump and social media share blame for misinformation that would sway the outcome of the election.
He wrote, “To inform better solutions and policy to combat misinformation, society needs a credible fact base that is supported by a robust body of research and led by a diverse network of scholars.”
Sands said that the Knight Foundation’s $50 million in grants have led to the establishment of new research centers at five top research universities and that the Knight Research Network have published “volumes” about mis- and disinformation.
One of those grantees went to the DHS-created Election Integrity Partnership to “detect and mitigate the impact of attempts to prevent or deter people from voting or delegitimize election results.” As FFO revealed in 2022, the Election Integrity Partnership was at the heart of efforts to censor the 2020 election.
He wrote that Knight’s journalism program aims to position journalists to treat mis- and disinformation as if it were a “chronic illness.”
In 2021, Sands announced the Foundation’s “open call” to fund new research into combatting disinformation in “communities of color.” He wrote about how coronavirus-related disinformation has targeted communities of color, and the 2020 election saw false information spread throughout Spanish-language media and Spanish-speaking social media about the results of the 2020 election.
In March, Sands reposted a Bluesky user that contended that America is living under “competitive authoritarianism.”
