Michael Pack

He attended Yale University from Fall 1972 to Fall 1973, but did not graduate.

From Fall 1974 to Spring 1975, Pack studied English at UC Berkeley.

School records show that he withdrew without obtaining a degree.

Pack attended New York University in the Summer of 1975 as a visiting student.

Early in his career, Pack worked for Radiotelevisione Italiana and the U.S. Information Agency.

Pack founded Manifold Productions, a documentary film company, in 1977.

He later served as an executive at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and as CEO of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.

Pack's short tenure as head of USAGM was characterized by NPR as a series of "crises".

Pack fired the heads of the news outlets under USAGM's purview, and installed Trump loyalists in the positions.

He disbanded a bipartisan board that oversees the USAGM, and spent millions of taxpayer dollars on law firms to investigate journalists for purported bias against Trump.

He rescinded rules at USAGM that protected journalists at Voice of America and other affiliates from political interference.

Pack was born in New York City.

He founded Manifold Productions, Inc., an independent film production company, in 1977.

Through Manifold Productions, Pack has written, directed and produced 13 documentary films on a range of topics.

In 1993, Pack served as Co-Chair of the International TV Council at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In 2002, President Bush nominated and the Senate confirmed Pack to serve on the National Council on the Humanities, which oversees the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He served from July 2002 to February 2005.

From 2003 to 2006, Pack served as Senior Vice President for Television Programming at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

From 2015 to 2017, Pack served as President and CEO of the Claremont Institute in Upland, California, and Publisher of its Claremont Review of Books.

Pack has collaborated with Stephen Bannon, a former Trump advisor and co-founder of the conservative website Breitbart News.

In 2016, President Barack Obama signed legislation abolishing the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent oversight board that had previously controlled several government-sponsored media agencies, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The role of the board was replaced by a single agency executive appointed by the White House augmented by advisory boards with no decision-making powers.

In June 2018, the White House announced that President Donald Trump intended to nominate Pack as the chief executive officer of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, making him the first CEO nominated to head the newly created USAGM since the 2016 reforms.

In 2019, Pack produced and directed a documentary about the Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas.

In January 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine sued Public Media Lab and Manifold Productions, alleging that they funneled $4.1 million in tax-protected nonprofit funds to Pack.

A settlement was reached in August 2022 with the production company transferring $210,000 back to the nonprofit which then distributed the restitution funds to nonprofit entities and dissolved.

Pack's first confirmation hearing took place on September 19, 2019.

Michael L. Pack is an American documentary filmmaker who was CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) from June 2020 to January 2021.

Pack was nominated by President Donald Trump and took office at USAGM in June 2020 after Senate confirmation.

He resigned on January 20, 2021 at the request of President Joe Biden, effective at 2:00 p.m., two hours after Biden took office.

On May 8, 2020, Senator Jim Risch moved to schedule a committee confirmation hearing for Pack for the following week.

Pack's nomination was contentious, with critics arguing that the mission of VOA would be compromised by installing a CEO who they considered a conservative partisan.

On May 12, 2020, Democratic Senator Robert Menendez raised with District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine the question of whether Pack unlawfully directed funds from the non-profit charitable organization he ran – Public Media Lab – to his profit-making company Manifold Productions.

According to CNBC, at least $1.6 million in donations received by the nonprofit had been sent to Manifold.

In response, Racine indicated that he initiated an investigation.

A request by Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to delay a vote until the investigation was complete was overruled by Risch, with the committee recommending Pack's nomination on a 12-10 party-line vote.

The Senate invoked cloture on Pack's nomination on June 4, 2020, by a vote of 53–39, and it confirmed him the same day by a vote of 53–38.

Pack assumed office over a week after his confirmation partially so his office could be swept for covert listening devices.

One of his first actions as USAGM CEO was to fire the heads of the outlets under his purview – among them Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), and the Open Technology Fund – including certain officials favored by conservatives.

Pack also installed Trump loyalists in leadership positions within the organization and disbanded a bipartisan board that oversees the USAGM.