By Emily Crane | New York Post
President
Biden’s pick to lead his Department of Homeland Security’s Big
Brother-like Disinformation Governance Board has her own history of
posting disinformation online.
Nina
Jankowicz, who was a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, has
repeatedly cast doubt on The Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden’s
laptop.
During
a series of live tweets during the presidential debate between Biden
and Donald Trump in October 2020, Jankowicz had referenced the laptop.
“Back
on the ‘laptop from hell,’ apparently—Biden notes 50 former natsec
officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian
influence op,” Jankowicz tweeted.
“Trump says ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,'” she added.
Her
tweet resurfaced immediately after she revealed she’d been named
executive director of the new disinformation bureau on Wednesday — as
conservatives slammed her as a “leftist radical” and expressed doubt in
her ability to spot misinformation.
Jankowicz
tried to brush off the controversy surrounding her old laptop tweet,
saying: “For those who believe this tweet is a key to all my views, it
is simply a direct quote from both candidates during the final
presidential debate. If you look at my timeline, you will see I was
livetweeting that evening.”
But
the Russian misinformation expert had told the Associated Press just a
week earlier that there was doubt the laptop even belonged to Hunter and
there were multiple red flags that emails uncovered from the device
were legit.
“We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” Jankowicz said at the time.
Jankowicz
had also tweeted a link to a news article in October 2020 that she said
cast “yet more doubt on the provenance of the NY Post’s Hunter Biden
story.”
“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 [fairy] tale
about a laptop repair shop,” she added in another tweet.
Wisconsin
Sen. Ron Johnson slammed Jankowicz on Wednesday as a “beacon of
misinformation” over her dismissal of the laptop – and accused her of
“furthering the false media narrative” with her series of tweets.
Jankowicz,
who has researched Russian disinformation tactics and online
harassment, also previously praised Christopher Steele — the author of
the since-discredited Trump-bashing dossier.
In
August 2020, Jankowicz tweeted about the former British spy’s appearance
on the Infotagion podcast, writing: “Listened to this last night –
Chris Steele (yes THAT Chris Steele) provides some great historical
context about the evolution of disinfo. Worth a listen.”
Steele’s
fake dossier, which sparked the probe into whether former President
Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with Russians during the 2016
election, was eventually debunked by special counsel Robert Mueller’s
investigation.
More recently, Jankowicz flagged concerns about the potential for Elon Musk to takeover Twitter.
“I
shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more
platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities,”
she said in an interview with NPR ahead of Musk’s takeover deal
emerging.
Since then, the billionaire Tesla CEO has vowed to make it a free speech haven.
Missouri
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley seized on Jankowicz’s tweet about free
speech, tweeting: “The Biden Administration’s new anti-speech czar is
apparently no fan of the @elonmusk Twitter acquisition. This is the
person Joe Biden just put in charge of policing Americans’ speech. Using
the power of the government.”
Jankowicz and the DHS didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
White
House press secretary Jen Psaki had no comment when asked about
Jankowicz’s ability to head the disinformation board during Thursday’s
media briefing.
“I
don’t have any comment on the laptop … And I don’t know who this
individual is, so I have no comment on that specifically,” Psaki told
reporters.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/28/wh-pick-for-disinformation-board-spread-hunter-biden-laptop-lie/
