Mike Benz is a U.S. internet personality, former speechwriter for Ben Carson and Stephen Miller. [1] , former State Department employee [2] , and USAID employee [3]
Mike Benz is a U.S. internet personality, former speechwriter for Ben Carson and Stephen Miller. [1] , former State Department employee [2] , and USAID employee [3]
Previously a corporate lawyer in New York, reporting from the New York Times and NBC News claims that Benz published content about Great Replacement theory and other racist views under the pseudonym "Frame Game" and described himself as a former member of the Proud Boys. [4] Benz was a guest on far-right podcasts [4] and has been accused of antisemitic statements, including "If I, a Jew, a member of the Tribe, Hebrew Schooled, can read Mein Kampf & think 'holy shit, Hitler actually had some decent points, Then NO ONE is safe from hating you once they find out who is behind the White genocide happening all over the world.'" [1] [4] [5]
In 2018, Benz's online posts were brought to the attention of management at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where Benz was employed; he later joined Stephen Miller's speechwriting team, where he was involved in efforts to deny the results of the 2020 US Presidential Election, and worked for about two months at the State Department, a position Benz cites as the source of his cybersecurity policy knowledge. [1]
In 2022, Benz became executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), which describes itself as a watchdog organization combatting internet censorship in the United States. [6] According to an early version of FFO's website, it was a project of Empower Oversight, a Republican-linked whistleblower advocacy organization. [7]
Benz released a report on August 27, 2022 alleging that the Department of Homeland Security colluded with technology companies to censor American users. [8] The report was covered by Just the News editor-in-chief John Solomon, who shared the story with other media personalities including Charlie Kirk. [9] [10] Benz's work was also cited by Twitter Files writer Michael Shellenberger in Shellenberger's March 2023 testimony to the US House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on "The Censorship Industrial Complex." [11]
Benz filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Murthy v. Missouri, repeating allegations that the United States government created a "complex online censorship regime" to police the speech of US citizens. [12] An initial injunction in that case repeated Benz's allegation that the Election Integrity Partnership—a research consortium active during the 2020 and 2022 US elections—flagged 22 million messages to Twitter for removal; this number was incorrect, and in actuality the number of messages was less than 3,000. [13] [1]
The case was ultimately decided by the United States Supreme Court, where a 6-3 majority ruled that the states lacked standing to sue because they failed to demonstrate substantial risk of redressable injury traceable to government action. [14] The ruling overturned lower court rulings, which Justice Amy Coney Barrett said relied on a "clearly erroneous" reading of the evidentiary record. [15]
Benz alleged that USAID acted as a front for US military and intelligence operations around the world. [3] Benz's allegations received significant attention from Elon Musk, who retweeted Benz when posting about the agency's dismantling in February 2025. [16]
Media [17] [18] [19] and scholars attributed the decline and demise of USAID to Musk's engagement with claims like Benz's. [20] Other scholars estimated that the agency's closure could lead to more than fourteen million preventable deaths by 2030, more than four million of them among children under five years old. [21]
On April 16, 2025, Benz interviewed Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the closure of the State Department's office on combatting foreign interference and malign influence, which inherited the responsibilities of the Global Engagement Center (GEC) after the latter's funding expired in December 2024. Benz asked Rubio if there would be a "GEC files" as there had been a Twitter Files. Rubio indicated that effort would be overseen by Darren Beattie, a senior State Department official. [22] Benz later accepted a position at USAID as a special government employee in order to scrutinize the agency's records. [3]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)(...) A key voice behind both the Twitter Files and the USAID conspiracy theories is Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official-turned-conservative researcher whom Musk has promoted and interacted with on X more than 40 times in the past week. (...)
(...) As reported by various news organizations, one of Musk's principal influencers on this issue appears to have been a man named Mike Benz (...) [The article includes the testimony of Christine Sheckler, who worked 27 years at USAID.]