Former leader of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, blamed her resignation on the lack of “direction the board was going in” and the disinformation waged against the board in a Thursday interview.
The Disinformation Governance Board was paused Monday, and Jankowicz drafted a resignation letter Tuesday, according to the Washington Post. The establishment of the board was first mentioned less than a month ago on April 27. The board will be led by the co-author of the PATRIOT Act, Michael Chertoff, and former U.S. Deputy Secretary General Jamie Gorelick under Clinton during its “pause.” (RELATED: White House Responds To Disinfo Board Being ‘Paused’)
“Unfortunately and ironically, we were undone exactly by a disinformation campaign coming from folks who apparently want to put our national security behind their own personal political ambitions,” Jankowicz said on CNN, adding that the board was meant to combat disinformation from foreign adversaries and not for “policing speech.”
“At the time of the rollout I think there were other priorities that were kind of put ahead of this rollout of the disinformation governance board,” she said.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that there was “no question” that they “could’ve done a better job at communicating” what the board does when it was announced.
Jankowicz also mentioned on CNN how people were digging into her “personal life” and that her family received “threats almost every day for the past three weeks.”
“I didn’t resign because of the threats. I’m happy to take one for the team and take one for the country, frankly, in dealing with disinformation because this is how important this issue is. I resigned because I was unsure of the direction that the board was going to be going in,” she continued.
Jankowicz received scrutiny for pushing disinformation about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the now-discredited Steele Dossier, which former CIA officer Daniel Hoffman said was possibly “part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot.” She also called Republicans that criticize critical race theory (CRT) “disinformers.”
Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of the DHS, told the Daily Caller that the board was established to monitor domestic disinformation and that the establishment of the board was “politicizing the issue.”
“When it comes to disinformation, it’s clear that DHS, under President Biden, is making this a core responsibility – to include in the domestic context. They are also politicizing the issue as they have established a Disinformation Governance Board in the Secretary’s office… On top of that, they have appointed a highly controversial and partisan individual to head that board,” Jankowicz, Wolf said.