The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit operator of Wikipedia established in 2003, is facing scrutiny from the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia over concerns its online encyclopedia is being used to spread foreign propaganda.
In an April 24 letter, first reported by The Washington Post, Ed Martin initiated an inquiry questioning whether Wikimedia’s activities align with its tax-exempt status.
This status, defined under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, designates organizations as charitable entities generally exempt from federal income tax, provided they operate for specific purposes (like education) and adhere to rules, including restrictions on political campaign intervention.
Martin, appointed by President Trump in January, demanded detailed information from the San Francisco-based foundation regarding its editorial procedures, trust and safety protocols, and defenses against foreign influence campaigns.
Martin’s letter alleges that “Wikipedia is permitting information manipulation on its platform, including the rewriting of key, historical events and biographical information of current and previous American leaders, as well as other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States.” He contends these actions are problematic for an entity with an educational mission, writing, “Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material is antithetical to Wikimedia’s ‘educational’ mission.”
A Pattern Of Scrutiny
This move against Wikimedia is not isolated. It fits within a broader pattern where the Trump administration and conservative allies have challenged institutions perceived as holding liberal biases.
Earlier in April 2025, reports indicated the administration prompted the IRS to investigate Harvard University’s tax-exempt status amid disputes over diversity policies and campus speech.
Martin himself, a longtime GOP operative with no prior prosecutorial experience (whose real-world counterpart led conservative groups like the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles), recently questioned the editorial policies of a scientific journal specializing in chest medicine. His background also includes over 150 appearances on media networks backed by Russia, including one instance shortly before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine where he disputed evidence of Russian military buildup.
He also recently apologized for praising a pardoned January 6 defendant known for antisemitic and pro-Nazi views, claiming ignorance despite previous public defenses over several years.
The inquiry into Wikimedia also follows escalating conservative criticism directed at Wikipedia. Elon Musk has publicly disparaged the platform, posting on X in December 2024 to “Stop donating to Wokepedia” and attacking its spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has also become a critic, arguing the platform exhibits left-leaning bias. Think tanks like the Manhattan Institute published a an analysis in 2024 finding “suggestive evidence” of bias, while activist groups like the Media Research Center reported in February that many conservative outlets are rated poorly by the platform’s internal source reliability assessments.
Some points in Martin’s letter also paralleled findings in a March 2025 report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). This followed a 2024 decision by Wikipedia’s volunteer editors to designate the ADL as generally unreliable specifically on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, citing its advocacy role.
Wikimedia’s Position And Operational Realities
Responding indirectly in a statement on April 25, the Wikimedia Foundation highlighted Wikipedia’s objective to “inform, not persuade,” relying on nearly 260,000 global volunteers and policies aimed at accuracy, fairness, and neutrality. “Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge,” the foundation stated.
Launched in 2001, Wikipedia ranks as the world’s ninth-most visited website, according to Similarweb estimates, and serves as a foundational data source for training major AI models.
This high traffic, particularly automated scraping by AI developers, has significantly taxed Wikimedia’s servers, reportedly contributing to a bandwidth usage increase of nearly 50% over the past year. To mitigate this and provide structured access, Wikimedia Enterprise, the foundation’s commercial division offering data services, released datasets on Google’s Kaggle platform (a popular site for data scientists) on April 16.
This offers pre-parsed content under open licenses (like CC BY-SA 4.0 and GFDL) suitable for machine learning uses. Critics view Martin’s letter skeptically. Wikipedia editor and tech critic Molly White stated she sees it as part of a campaign of “weaponizing laws to try to silence high-quality independent information” sources. Journalist Stephen Harrison suggested the inquiry reflects a desire for an “America First version of Wikipedia,” conflicting with its global scope.
