Former Disinformation Chief advised to be intentionally vague during board collapse: Transcript

Nina Jankowicz, the former face of the short-lived Disinformation Governance Board, revealed to Congress that the Department of Homeland Security was intentionally opaque in the face of overwhelming criticism that led to the board’s collapse.

Jankowicz spoke to lawmakers during a deposition about the department’s internal decisions to address widespread concerns about the floundering board. The deposition took place last April, but after it was broached during a hearing this week, House Judiciary Committee members agreed to release a transcript of it on Friday.

Jankowicz said during the closed-door interview that her superiors prohibited her from taking a transparent approach when she repeatedly asked to give on-the-record details about the board.

“The guidance from up above was that we were to be as vague as possible, which I found very frustrating,” Jankowicz said.

She said she directly received the guidance from her colleague Jen Daskal, a lawyer and co-chair of the board, but that she believed the instruction “was coming from elsewhere in the building.”

Jankowicz served as executive director of the disinformation board for just over two months, from March to May 2022, but she resigned amid intense backlash from Republicans who were skeptical of the board’s impartiality and accused it of seeking to censor right-leaning viewpoints. DHS dissolved the board soon after Jankowicz’s exit.

Jankowicz was outspoken after her resignation about how DHS had, in her view, botched the rollout of the board and failed to address criticisms. She went further in her deposition, however, saying that in addition to actively suppressing details about the board, she also felt DHS abandoned her and let her serve as a scapegoat.

“I do believe I was thrown under the bus to some degree,” Jankowicz said. “I believe DHS made the calculation that it was easier to let the work be undermined than steal themselves and get on with something that they thought was important.”

As soon as DHS announced the board, concerns immediately began to swirl that it would stifle right-leaning perspectives, and Jankowicz’s Biden-friendly political views, which she had publicized in part through past online posts, fueled worries on the Right.

Unearthed posts on X showed Jankowicz lending credence to Christopher Steele, author of an infamous and discredited dossier, and persistently casting doubts on the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Jankowicz, who previously worked as a policy adviser for the Biden campaign, was featured in a spurt of headlines that she said became so aggressive that she received death threats.

However, she would not speak during the deposition about her partisan social media posts, repeatedly claiming that her political views before joining the board lacked relevance.

“I am not going to answer questions that are not pertinent on the advice of my attorney,” she said of the posts.

She also reiterated comments she has made in the past about how DHS allowed perspectives from the Right to overpower it.

“We did not provide enough information at the outset. We left a vacuum for people to speculate. And indeed, within hours of the board being announced, the phrase ‘ministry of truth’ — which, again, the board had nothing to do with being a ministry of truth — was trending on social media,” she said.

Jankowicz’s deposition transcript comes as the Biden administration, and DHS in particular, continues to take heat for coordinating with or pressuring outside parties, such as social media companies, to censor information it finds faulty. A case before the Supreme Court, Murthy v. Missouri, is set to determine this year whether the executive branch violated the First Amendment by dictating how social media companies should moderate their content.

Jankowicz, for her part, has continued her work on tackling “disinformation” on the nonprofit stage, announcing last month that she founded the American Sunlight Project.

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Her first order of business was to send a public letter to the congressional members, namely Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY), who investigated her and DHS for censorship.

“Disinformation knows no political party. Its ultimate victim is democracy. This threat is growing more acute each day, and you have become the primary obstacle to addressing it,” Jankowicz told the lawmakers.

Gabe Kaminsky contributed to this report.