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.
https://twitter.com/wiczipedia/status/1319463138107031553
https://twitter.com/wiczipedia/status/1018894448883916800
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.”
https://twitter.com/wiczipedia/status/1323982833099149313
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.
