USAID – The Machinery of Political Manipulation 1.

The Sovereignty Protection Office published its analysis in the second half of last week on the allocation and use of USAID funds in Hungary. In this document, the office exposes a corruption network aimed at overthrowing and staging a coup against the lawfully elected national government of Hungary. Magyar Nemzet presents the findings of the report in a series of articles. In this first installment, we explore why and how this unprecedented American attempt at influence in Central Europe began.

Headquarters of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on February 3, 2025 (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North America/Getty Images via AFP)

Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, a think tank focused on advancing American interests in the Middle East, reported to DOGE that USAID had provided funds to the Palestinian Hamas, while the Taliban received forty million dollars weekly.

He emphasized that U.S. aid had indirectly reached al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Hamza network in Sudan, as well as Islamic Jihad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah, Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and dozens of other terrorist organizations.

While these revelations are gravely concerning, the financial support directed toward opposition forces in Poland with the aim of toppling the right-wing government is no less questionable. And it wasn’t just about financial aid. "A 2021 internal USAID document titled Disinformation Primer included recommended strategies such as suppressing unwanted content in search engine results and depriving content creators of advertising revenue," the report published by the Sovereignty Protection Office states.

The CEP

USAID’s Central Europe Program (CEP) was launched in 2021, shortly after Joe Biden took office. Its clear objective was to destabilize states that, in the view of American Democrats and the deep state, were not pursuing policies aligned with U.S. interests.

USAID claimed that the CEP promoted and defended democratic values. In reality, political pressure groups executing the program carried out activities in direct opposition to national governments’ policies, serving the global progressive elite’s ideology and attempting to discredit governing parties," the report issued by SPO states.

The program’s foundation was built on warnings from analysts paid by USAID, who claimed that the region was undergoing the world’s fastest slide into autocracy, with Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria being particularly at risk, thus justifying intervention.

Seemingly in response to this, USAID announced on December 12, 2022, that it was launching a new funding program in Central Europe to strengthen the pillars of resilient democratic societies—namely democratic institutions, civil society, and independent media. The agency justified the initiative by stating, "In recent years, democratic institutions have been undermined in some Central European countries, [...] and the Biden-Harris administration has made it clear that strengthening democracy [...] is essential to addressing the unprecedented challenges of our time," according to the SZH report.

 

Hidden network of pressure groups

The announcement about the program’s launch—also posted on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Budapest—misleadingly claimed that "the funding [...] is not tied to any political party in the United States or Hungary. The funds will be managed by local partners who, regardless of political affiliation, have assessed how best to address local challenges in Hungary. The program’s content will be developed by local partners."

The nominal goal of the program was to assist the U.S. government’s efforts to counter "malign foreign influence" in the region. However, if the U.S. government truly intended to achieve this, it would not have relied on a covertly funded network of political pressure groups in Hungary but would have taken action through military alliances and diplomatic channels.

 

Opaque finances

The U.S. federal government spending database deliberately obscures information on who received USAID funding and for what purpose. However, a call for applications, published on March 8, 2022, for potential USAID partners, exposes the true aims of the CEP.

Beyond supporting political pressure groups, informal networks, media figures and influencers, legal and judicial communities, the program’s funds also went to political parties and other democratic actors.

The appropriate U.S. organizations could also have been among the beneficiaries of Central European funds, potentially enabling recruitment efforts. Some politicians in the region were provided with training and communications workshops to improve their public speaking and negotiation skills. The program’s potential coordinating partners were notified of new funding opportunities but were also explicitly told that achieving USAID’s desired objectives would not be guaranteed by the project alone; success would require diplomatic intervention from Washington and Brussels.

Mobilizing key players more effectively

The support system was structured accordingly: the officials in charge of the program were expected to demonstrate heightened flexibility and cooperation, allowing to modify the scope of funded activities and target countries in response to the outcomes of the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary elections, the 2023 Polish parliamentary elections, and the 2024 European Parliament elections.

Therefore, USAID emphasized in its call for applications that the program’s goal was not to expand the political pressure network but to mobilize existing actors—those already embedded in Brussels’ lobbying structures—as effectively as possible. The agency also instructed coordinating partners to contract with intermediary organizations capable of coordinating their activities before, during, and after elections with like-minded parties and European Union institutions.

Who organized this Central European Program, and who were its targets? Find out in the next installment of our series.