The Department of Homeland Security Concludes It Never Needed a ‘Disinformation Governance Board’

Back in May, the Washington Post ran a story by Taylor Lorenz, revealing that the Department of Homeland Security had decided to shut down the Disinformation Governance Board, and executive director Nina Jankowicz chose to resign, because of intense criticism from, as Lorenz put it, “the right-wing Internet apparatus.”

Some of us pointed out that the explanation didn’t make much sense:

As much as I would love to believe that conservative voices on the Internet have awesome and far-reaching power that makes cabinet secretaries quake in their boots, that is not the way the world has ever worked, that is not the way the world works now, and that is not the way the world will likely ever work. Federal agencies don’t shut down projects just because they’ve gotten a lot of critical coverage in the media, particularly conservative media.

If intense criticism from the Internet could get a federal agency to stop doing something, very few federal agencies would ever do anything. If intense criticism from the Internet could get a federal official to resign, then Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, Alejandro Mayorkas, Merrick Garland, Janet Yellen and just about the entire Biden administration would all be cleaning out their desks.

I contended that there had to be something more at work in the sudden reversal of the department’s decision.

Earlier this week, DHS formally announced that, “In accordance with the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s prior recommendation, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas has terminated the Disinformation Governance Board and rescinded its charter effective today, August 24, 2022.”

That HSAC study reviewed the various ways that the federal agencies under DHS, such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, dispel inaccurate information, and the final report released this week concluded that, “There is no need for a separate Disinformation Governance Board.” The interim report published in July offered the same conclusion.

Why did DHS shut down Nina Jankowicz’s operation? Because someone decided to form it before examining whether the department needed it. Once a panel of experts did take a look — including Jamie Gorelick, the Forrest Gump of American misfortune in the past three decades — they concluded the the DHS already had enough offices in enough agencies focused on rebutting disinformation, including disinformation coming from foreign governments. The Disinformation Governance Board was superfluous.

DHS didn’t need what Jankowicz planned to do, and the Mary Poppins-singing Biden donor who campaigned for Hillary Clinton and whose previous research was disputed as inaccurate, was undoubtedly turning into a public-relations nightmare for the department.

The version of events offered in Taylor Lorenz’s article never made a lick of sense. You might even call it . . . “disinformation.”