US State Department pressured allies to drop disinformation conference

Lithuania withdrew days after offering to pay for permanent US base

The Trump administration pressed multiple European governments to withdraw their sponsorship of one of Europe’s largest counter-disinformation conferences, according to three people familiar with the matter, including European officials. The conference, #Disinfo2026, opened Wednesday at a hotel in Vilnius, Lithuania, after the logos of three official supporters — the Lithuanian foreign ministry, the European External Action Service (EEAS), and Global Affairs Canada — were wiped from its website days before the event. Photographs of conference materials obtained by the Guardian show white stickers affixed over the printed logos of those organizations, appearing to indicate they were struck from the program in haste.

The conference is the annual gathering of Europe’s counter-disinformation community and is run by EU Disinfo Lab, an independent Brussels-based non-profit. It has drawn hundreds of researchers, journalists, technologists, and policymakers to Vilnius for the two-day event.

Internal US State Department documents seen by the Guardian show American officials thanking Lithuania for “taking US concerns seriously.” The document says Washington was “grateful” Lithuania supposedly found a panel framing the US as a foreign information threat “reprehensible and surprising” and welcomed Vilnius’s decision to limit its involvement.

That panel — titled “USA as a FIMI threat: adapt, acknowledge, push back,” with the acronym FIMI standing for “foreign information manipulation and interference” — convened on Wednesday. It explored how Europe’s counter-disinformation community could rebuild resilience without Washington, and is the first time the conference appears to have treated the United States as a potential disinformation actor in Europe. The panel included three American speakers, among them a former CIA officer, sources and the internal document indicated.

According to one person familiar with the deliberations, other US communications appeared to originate from the office of Sarah B Rogers, the US undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. The Guardian understood from French officials that France was also contacted about its support for the conference.

A diplomatic source at France’s foreign ministry said “there’s absolutely no reason for us to change our commitments” when it came to supporting the event. “We stick to supporting civil society. It’s not just principled, it’s operational,” the source said, adding that the conference was a “laboratory” that helped Europe develop key policy on disinformation.

In statements, Lithuania, Canada, and the EU each said the program did not align with their official views on the US role in disinformation — though that program had been in place since June, before the sponsorship withdrawals. “Lithuania has cancelled its participation in ‘Disinfo 2026’ as several parts of the conference programme differ from the official position of the Government,” Lithuania’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Global Affairs Canada “carefully assesses participation in, and sponsorship of, external events on a case-by-case basis,” GAC spokesperson Samantha Lafleur said. “Following changes to the framing of several panel discussions, GAC decided to revise its participation in those sessions at the EU DisinfoLab 2026 conference.” Canadian officials are still participating in the conference, Lafleur added.

An EU spokesperson confirmed the EEAS had decided to withdraw its support because “the organisers chose to frame some of the discussions in a way which does not align with the official positions held by the EU.” EU officials, the Guardian understands, did not agree with the characterization of the US as a disinformation actor.

Despite withdrawing its branding as an official supporter, the EU continues to fund the conference. In its latest report on foreign information manipulation and interference threats, published in March, the EU’s diplomatic service named Russia and China as “threat actors” without any negative reference to the US.

Nina Jankowicz, a former US official and disinformation expert who in 2022 briefly headed the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board, which Republicans assailed as a vehicle for policing Americans’ speech, said she understood that Washington had pressured Lithuania and Canada to withdraw from the conference. “What this amounts to is a purported defender of free speech at the state department using the enormous power of the US government to try to pressure Americans from criticizing their government,” Jankowicz said.

Lithuania’s withdrawal came days after Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius said Lithuania would pay for a permanent US military base if the Trump administration agreed, a day after Trump said he would consider the request. Sinkevicius first raised the idea in a meeting with Trump’s envoy John Coale and called a lasting American presence a “critically important guarantee of deterrence and security” against Russia. Lithuania, a member of the EU and Nato, borders Russia and its close ally Belarus. The US has kept a rotating armoured battalion of almost 1,000 troops in Lithuania since 2019, the US Army has noted. “They are great people, so we will certainly look at it,” Trump said on Monday.

The US State Department has taken an increasingly interventionist posture toward free speech and civil society in Europe over the past year. The Guardian has reported that the State Department is awarding millions of dollars in non-competitive grants to organizations across the continent supportive of the Trump administration’s agenda.