Last Updated on April 28, 2022
According to a newsletter from Politico, Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is forming a “Disinformation Governance Board.” The news was later confirmed by Nina Jankowicz, who will be in charge of the new effort.
According to Politico, the Disinformation Governance Board will coordinate “countering misinformation related to homeland security”, with a specific focus on “irregular migration” and Russia.
Nina Jankowicz will head the board as executive director, which she later confirmed in a tweet. Jankowicz previously was a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship and oversaw Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute, according to Politico.
“Honored to be serving in the Biden Administration @DHSgov and helping shape our counter-disinformation efforts,” Jankowicz wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.
Jankowicz is an ardent Russian collusion conspiracy theorist and routinely questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 election. She has repeatedly claimed that Trump was “compromised” by Russia and referred to Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian disinformation campaign. In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, Jankowicz even suggested that Russian hackers may have altered vote totals.
Back on the "laptop from hell," apparently- Biden notes 50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op.
Trump says "Russia, Russia, Russia."
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) October 23, 2020
One final striking thing, before I sign off and hope that Trump doesn’t give back Alaska while I’m here:
Trump said he told Putin that the Mueller investigation existed just to justify a democratic loss.
Music to Putin’s ears. We can only imagine what else he said.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) July 16, 2018
As of 2020, however, Jankowicz, has referred to any questioning of the 2020 election as “disinformation.” She has criticized Twitter and Facebook for not doing enough to combat “election” disinformation and vaccine skepticism, both of which Jankowicz has routinely described as “national security threats.”
Perspective on why Trump’s claims of victory – which amount to disinformation, in my view – are antithetical to democracy:
Popular vote so far:
68,818,209 votes Biden
66,187,571 votes TrumpWe know more than 100 million Americans cast early votes.
Every vote counts.
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) November 4, 2020
The new disinformation board keeps in line with similar DHS initiatives that have been implemented under President Biden. In February, a DHS terrorism threat bulletin listed “disinformation” as a top national security threat.
The DHS listed “widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19,” as two sources of what they call “MDM”, or misinformation. “Grievances associated with these themes inspired violent extremist attacks during 2021,” the memo continued, failing to provide examples.
