Definers Public Affairs

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Definers Public Affairs was a right‑leaning opposition research firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It did media monitoring, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) research, and helped craft communications aimed at hurting the public image of opponents of its clients. The firm shared office space and personnel with America Rising and NTK Network. It was founded in 2016 by Republican operatives Joe Pounder and Matt Rhoades. In 2017, Dentons teamed up with Definers to form 3D Global Affairs, offering government relations, opposition research, and rapid-response communications. Definers also opened offices in San Francisco to serve Silicon Valley clients and in London as the UK Policy Group, led by Andrew Goodfellow.

Definers pitched stories to outlets such as NTK Network and America Rising, which sometimes picked them up by larger sites like Breitbart. An anonymous former employee described NTK Network as an “in‑house fake news shop.” In December 2017, Definers received a no‑bid EPA contract worth $120,000 to identify “resistance figures” opposing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. The firm listed itself as a “small disadvantaged business” by error, which was corrected. Allan Blutstein, a Definers attorney, filed FOIA requests on bureaucrats seen as hostile to Pruitt. The contract was canceled after media scrutiny, drawing criticism from figures like former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly and AFGE leader John O’Grady, who warned it threatened EPA staff; Charles Tiefer called it crony capitalism.

In November 2017, venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar sued Definers over a supposed smear campaign against him. In October 2017, Facebook expanded work with Definers to monitor coverage of issues including Russian meddling, Cambridge Analytica, hate speech, and calls for regulation. Silicon Valley head Tim Miller argued for pushing positive content about a client and negative content about competitors. Facebook’s Elliot Schrage said he asked Definers to open a file on George Soros after Soros called Facebook “a menace to society.” A Definers document linked Soros to critics of Facebook; after a New York Times article, Facebook cut ties. Soros’s Open Society Foundations called the document a distraction from Facebook’s problems and defended the work as factual, while BuzzFeed published some of Definers’ Soros research.