It’s concerning enough when President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security sets up an ominous-sounding agency called the “Disinformation Governance Board.”
However, it’s difficult to know whether to laugh or cry when you realize the person being picked to lead it called Hunter Biden’s laptop “disinformation.”
Meet Nina Jankowicz. You may have already been acquainted with her; any time the media needs an expert talking head to say something about Russian disinformation, she’s ready and willing to do a segment or provide a handy quote.
Now, according to Politico, she’ll be heading up the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security.
(At The Western Journal, we’ve noted how loosely the Biden White House seems to treat the term “disinformation,” which should worry all of us. We’ll keep bringing America the truth about the administration’s attempt to label real news as fake; you can help us by subscribing.)
The board, according to Politico, will “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia.”
Here’s my official portrait to grab your attention. Now that I’ve got it: a HUGE focus of our work, and indeed, one of the key reasons the Board was established, is to maintain the Dept’s committment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, & civil liberties. ?? pic.twitter.com/C4xiEGfhDt
— Nina Jankowicz ???? (@wiczipedia) April 27, 2022
Using the Disinformation Governance Board to counter disinformation from Russia is little surprise, although you would have thought we had an alphabet soup of intelligence agencies already doing that. It’s also worth noting, too, that Jankowicz whiffed on the biggest “Russian disinformation” story in recent years, although more on that later.
“Irregular migration,” though?
This might be a new one on you. According to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, irregular migration is: “Movement of persons that takes place outside the laws, regulations, or international agreements governing the entry into or exit from the State of origin, transit or destination.”
Now, there are a goodly number of circumstances under which one might be classified as an “irregular migrant.” The most prominent one in the United States, however, involves illegal immigration at our southern border, where over 211,000 individuals were apprehended in March alone.
In May, when Biden is set to end the invocation of Title 42 protections and illegal immigrants can’t be summarily deported without a potential asylum hearing, that number is set to skyrocket.
While Politico’s report didn’t specifically say whether this would be the “irregular migration” the Disinformation Governance Board would be handling, the U.K. Daily Mail reported Wednesday that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters that the board would be countering disinformation in Hispanic communities ahead of this November’s midterms, so you be the judge.
As for Russia, Jankowicz tweeted in March of 2021 about an Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s report about foreign threats to the 2020 election.
The Intelligence Community, she tweeted, “has a high degree of confidence that the Kremlin used proxies to push influence narratives, including misleading or unsubstantiated claims about President Biden, to US media, officials, and influencers, some close to President Trump.
“A clear nod to the alleged Hunter laptop,” she added.
IC has a high degree of confidence that the Kremlin used proxies to push influence narratives, including misleading or unsubstantiated claims about President Biden, to US media, officials, and influencers, some close to President Trump.
A clear nod to the alleged Hunter laptop.
— Nina Jankowicz ???? (@wiczipedia) March 16, 2021
If there’s substantive proof that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a “misleading or unsubstantiated” claim about Biden pushed by the Kremlin, that evidence has yet to surface or be made public. No evidence has emerged to counter the official story that Hunter Biden dropped the laptop off at a repair shop and forgot to pick it up; that the contents of the laptop were sent to various U.S. officials and intelligence organizations by the repair shop owner; and that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was the only one to act on it.
However, in the interim, almost every news organization that has covered the story has verified the contents of the laptop are genuine. This includes holdouts like The New York Times and Washington Post — which, 18 months after the New York Post was locked out of its Twitter account for reporting on the contents of the computer, have finally acknowledged the Post’s reports were accurate.
One bad call doth not invalidate an entire career’s worth of work. That said, it’s curious that someone who said the ODNI report made a “clear nod to the alleged Hunter laptop” (gotta love that “alleged”) as being disinformation is now tasked by the federal government with combatting disinformation ahead of the 2022 midterms.
For what it’s worth, the Disinformation Governance Board won’t have any official powers to limit speech. According to the Daily Mail, “Mayorkas did say that the new board would come under the Biden-era Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), meaning it would have no powers to crack down on disinformation and will instead try to combat it by throwing money at what it sees as problems.”
But just because it’s not outright Orwellian doesn’t mean it’s not highly problematic. First, the board will be potentially “throwing money” at two issues that are going to hurt the Democrats hard at the ballot box this November: illegal immigration and the Hunter Biden laptop.
While it’s unclear what it will do about the latter, if anything (circumstances have changed considerably since Jankowicz’s tweet about the “alleged Hunter laptop,” after all), the former is set to be a cataclysm for the left. While the particulars aren’t exactly in the public domain at the moment, this sounds like it has the potential to turn into a federally funded ad campaign for the Democrats under the guise of fighting “disinformation.”
Second, the chances this agency doesn’t experience mission creep feel like a solid zero. It’ll never solve disinformation from Russia or about “irregular migration,” but it’ll certainly find new sources of “disinformation” — and will ask for new sources of funding to fight them, natch. Also, at least for the time being, what do you think those sources of disinformation will be?
Will Jankowicz and Co. be getting to the bottom of the Steele dossier and the Russiagate hoax? Or will they be looking at some specious connection between Joe Rogan’s podcast and ivermectin overdoses? You make the call. It’s not a difficult one.
However toothless the Disinformation Governance Board may end up being, it’s yet another sign the Biden administration wants to cast a pall over free speech.
We already have adequate resources to counter Russian disinformation within the intelligence community — and any anti-disinformation campaign aimed at those within the United States is a de facto war on dissidence.
The Disinformation Governance Board may be a form of soft dystopia, but it’s still dystopia.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
