President Trump amplified unfounded claims on Thursday that the government had been paying news media outlets to generate positive coverage of Democrats.
The conspiracy theories appear to have been generated by records showing payments for something much more innocuous: subscriptions.
Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social site that “billions of dollars” from U.S.A.I.D. and other agencies had improperly gone to the “fake news media.” He spread a claim that Politico, a “left wing rag,” had received $8 million, and questioned if The New York Times and other outlets had also received payments.
Users on X this week tried to make a connection between a payroll issue reported at Politico and the administration’s dismantling of U.S.A.I.D., the foreign aid agency. Some users began sharing screenshots that appeared to show federal payments to Politico.
Records on USAspending.gov, a federal site that tracks government payments, show that federal agencies have paid Politico for subscriptions, including to its Politico Pro service. Politico Pro offers policy-related resources and tracks news and legislation, and has more than 30,000 subscribers, according to a Politico overview.
U.S.A.I.D. paid $44,000 to Politico during the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, according to the spending records, which described the two contracts as for “E&E news subscriptions.” E&E News covers energy and environmental issues.
John Harris, Politico’s editor in chief, and Goli Sheikholeslami, its chief executive, said in a memo to employees Wednesday that the news organization “has never been a beneficiary of government programs or subsidies — not one cent, ever, in 18 years.”
“As a practical matter, the overwhelming majority of our professional subscriptions under Politico Pro are in the private sector,” the memo said.
Politico said it had no further comment beyond Mr. Harris’s and Ms. Sheikholeslami’s memo.
Agencies under the Trump administration have also paid for subscriptions, according to the records. The Executive Office of the President in 2017, for example, set aside $97,720 for payment for Politico.
Still, the payments stoked conspiracy theories that reached Trump officials and other conservative voices. Elon Musk, the head of a team seeking to cut government spending, said on Wednesday that the payments were “not an efficient use of taxpayer funds.”
The White House also addressed the conspiracy on Wednesday, with its press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, saying that more than $8 million had gone to buying Politico subscriptions.
“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,” she said. “We are going line by line when it comes to the federal government’s books.”
Mr. Musk was responding to a user who noted a $517,855 payment in 2020 from the Food and Drug Administration for Politico Pro subscriptions. “This wasteful expenditure will be deleted,” he added.
In his all-caps post on Thursday, Mr. Trump wrote: “This could be the biggest scandal of them all, perhaps the biggest in history!”
Benjamin Mullin contributed reporting.