The Senate Homeland Security Committee canceled a May 10 hearing on the dangers of disinformation because the Democrats who run the committee couldn’t figure out how to keep Disinformation Governance Board czar Nina Jankowicz from testifying. Their concern was protecting one of the vulnerable Democratic committee members from potential political fallout:
Senator Maggie Hassan.
“Senate Democrats planned to hold a May 10 hearing on ‘disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation,’ just a couple of weeks after Biden tapped Jankowicz to head his administration’s newly created Disinformation Governance Board. Democratic leaders were reluctant to have Jankowicz face Republican questioning, however, prompting them to nix the hearing,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
“They yanked it when the entire ‘disinformation board’ blew up,” one senior aide told the Free Beacon. “They realized there’s no way they could reschedule without Nina Jankowicz being called to testify.”
“We have at least one Democrat who has a tough reelection coming up this cycle,” the aide said, referring to New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan. “It’s pretty insane.”
Hassan and her comms staffers, both in her official U.S. Senate office and on her political campaign, have declined to respond to repeated requests for comment about the disinformation board, Hassan’s support for it, or the report that she’s being protected from this major blunder by the Biden administration.
While many elected officials in both parties have condemned the creation of the DGB, Hassan has not mentioned it in her public comments, in her press releases, or on social media. The issue is directly related to her Senate duties as a member of the committee whose job is to oversee the Homeland Security department that created it.
It appears, however, the point may be moot. Multiple media outlets report the Biden administration has put the DGB on “pause,” and Jankowicz has tendered her resignation.
“I had hoped we would be more transparent about how the board was going to operate and what it was going to do,” Jankowicz said in a statement. “For whatever reason, that didn’t happen, and that information vacuum only grew. And I think the information vacuum kind of directed a lot of the attacks and digging around in my personal life.”
The “personal life” comment is in reference to her public postings on social media, ranging from far-Left partisan attacks, to false statements about COVID-19 and the Trump administration to a bizarre Tic Toc video of Jankowicz lecturing viewers about disinformation, to the tune of a song from the musical Mary Poppins.
Even liberal icon Bill Maher criticized the DGB and the woman running it. “Yes, they’re right to compare this to Orwell in the ‘Ministry of Truth,’ Maher said on his HBO TV show Saturday. “That’s exactly what it sounds like.”
“These are not bright people in our government.”
