DOGE’s most infamous goon has bounced back.
Edward “Big Balls” Coristine has landed a new gig: helping Donald Trump build a website allowing Europeans to see banned content – including terrorist propaganda and hate speech.
In a move designed by the U.S. to counter censorship by foreign governments, Marco Rubio’s State Department has registered freedom.gov – an online portal aimed at giving users in Europe and elsewhere access to content restricted under local regulations.
Coristine, a former member of Elon Musk’s job-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, is involved through the National Design Studio, which was was created by Trump to bolster government websites.
“FREEDOM IS COMING,” Coristine wrote on X, alongside a link to a website homepage that added: “Information is power. Reclaim Your human right to free expression.”
The 20-year-old is the scion of a trendy popcorn company fortune and dropped out of Northeastern University after being educated at $57,530-a-year Rye Country Day in one of New York city’s wealthiest commuter towns, Rye, New York.
“Big Balls’” notoriety skyrocketed last year after he was assaulted in Washington by a 15-year-old girl and boy on a quiet street in the early hours of the morning.
The episode quickly became political fodder, with Trump citing it as proof of urban decay in the nation’s capital, while MAGA influencers such as Benny Johnson called for him to be given the presidential medal of freedom—the highest civilian honor in the U.S. – for his “heroic” efforts in helping a friend during the attack.
Last year, he was employed as “senior adviser” in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, data hub that serves as the IT department for Washington’s diplomatic apparatus. Critics who spoke to the Washington Post at the time said they feared this position could “give him a foothold for obtaining unauthorized access to classified material” and perhaps “obtain compromising information on other countries and foreign activities.”
However, he may appear to be an unlikely campaigner for free speech: the Trump administration desperately fought to keep the DOGE team’s names secret, claiming they would be “doxxed.”
But he appears to have embraced the project, which is headed by the department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, who has sharply criticized European and British online speech laws, arguing that their content restrictions amount to censorship and overreach.
The Trump administration has made “free speech” a central part of its foreign policy, particularly what it views as the stifling of conservative voices online.
Touring Europe earlier this month, Rogers discussed plans for the administration to fund its effort to free speech in western countries aligned with the U.S.
The administration’s National Security Strategy released in December also hit out at European leaders for censoring free speech and suppressing opposition to immigration policies.
Trump then issued visa bans against a former European Union commissioner and four anti-disinformation campaigners it said were involved in censoring U.S. social media platforms, sparking condemnation from European leaders.
Europe’s approach to free speech differs from the U.S., where the Constitution protects virtually all expression. The European Union’s limits grew from efforts to fight any resurgence of extremist propaganda that fueled Nazism including its vilification of Jews, foreigners and minorities.
In an interview with right-wing broadcaster GB News earlier this year, for instance, “Big Balls’” boss, Rogers, said that “nothing is off the table” for the U.S. to open up “authoritarian, closed societies” which censor the internet.
She was echoing claims by JD Vance, the vice president who chief of staff Susie Wiles has called a conspiracy theorist, and by Musk, that people in the U.K. particularly are being locked up simply for posting online.
But the project could escalate tensions with America’s key allies, particularly in the wake of Trump’s attempt to seize Greenland, Russia’s war in Ukraine and global trade wars.
Leaders including the U.K.’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, have said they are simply enforcing public order and race hatred laws.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the department for comment.
The freedom.gov site itself has no live content. However, U.S. officials have reportedly floated adding a built-in VPN function to make users appear to be browsing from the U.S. where the First Amendment’s broad protections make much of what Europe bans legal.
This would effectively be a U.S. government-sanctioned workaround for laws like the European Union’s Digital Services Act—the sweeping rulebook requiring tech companies to remove illegal hate speech, terrorist propaganda, and disinformation.
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