The Department of Homeland security is putting a pause on the new Disinformation Governance Board after it was created three weeks ago because it was receiving strong criticism from both sides of the aisle, said a source to CNN.
Nina Jankowicz was chosen as the head of the agency and was touted as a disinformation expert who had worked on Ukraine and Russia issues. She was quickly caught in controversy after her previous videos and tweets were shared on social media.
See what House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said about the board during his conference discussing the disbanding of the board.
“It’s a scheme conjured up by Washington Democrats to grant themselves the authority to control free speech,” McCarthy said at a news conference on May 11. “They fear Americans’ having unfettered access to information because it will challenge the power that they want to have over people’s lives.”
Here is a video of Jankowicz telling people to practice “informational distancing” in a joke about social distancing.
GOP politicos and lawmakers also showed examples of her previous tweets about the Hunter Biden laptop and the Christopher Steele Dossier as being wholly inaccurate.
She wrote on October 22, 2022, “Not to mention that the emails don’t need to be altered to be part of an influence campaign. Voters deserve that context, not a fairly tale about a laptop repair shop.”
When it was created, The White House defended the effort and their chosen head Jankowicz.
See what GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert had to say about Nina Jankwoicz on the House Floor.
Now just three weeks after, the Washington Post reported that the board was cancelled for the time being.
A Tik Tok video, she posted before being the head of the board, shows her attacking Rudy Giuliani.
DHS secretary Mayorkas tried to help the group and called for the public to trust them as it was only an advisory board and was intended to discover best practices and procedures for fighting disinformation.
Mayorkas admitted that the rollout of the board was a disaster saying to Dana Bash: “We probably could have done a better job of communicating what it does and does not do.”
Do you think the board was cancelled because it was so unpopular?
