Biden’s Disinformation Czar Breaks Silence after Would-Be Unit Crashes and Burns

Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we check in on the reanimated corpse of the Ministry of Truth, take a closer look at the first viral post-Dobbs horror story, and hit more media misses. 

Jankowicz’s Encore

While the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board was short-lived, its first and only executive director, Nina Jankowicz, continues to haunt the embattled president.

Appearing on Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources on Sunday, Jankowicz complained that the board, which she crashed into nonexistence less than a month after its introduction, had its purpose spun by “Republicans” and the “far-left,” calling the board itself a “victim of disinformation.”

“If that’s true, what the heck was the Homeland Security Department doing? Why didn’t they defend you? Why didn’t you defend yourself? Why didn’t the government explain what it was doing?” asked an indignant Stelter.

“I have a lot of misgivings about the way things went down,” replied Jankowicz, complaining that she received “disproportionate” attention from the media. She also lamented that the administration “rolled over to the critics” and failed to defend “the expert [Jankowicz] that they had chosen to lead this board.”

However, as the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy pointed out on Twitter, the focus on Jankowicz was understandable given her, at best, checkered record of identifying disinformation, and demonstrated record of spreading it. Indeed, despite her protests that she was merely “sharing info about a presidential election as it was happening” in 2016 and 2020, Jankowicz had strongly held — and wrong — opinions on major disinformation issues during both contests.

In 2016, Jankowicz professed to be “horrified” by bogus reports of a supposed connection between Donald Trump’s campaign for president and Russia’s Alfa Bank, saying it confirmed her “worst fears” about the candidate. Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, admitted earlier this year that the campaign knew the story was of questionable veracity when it brought it to the press, and FBI agents who reviewed the supposed evidence of such a connection questioned the mental faculties of those who drew the same conclusions as Jankowicz did.  

If Jankowicz was at the head of an active disinformation governance board at the time and was presented with flimsy evidence of a Trump-Russia connection that confirmed her priors like the Alfa Bank story, would she have correctly identified it as Clinton-campaign-funded disinformation, or would she have joined FBI leadership in being “fired up” over it, encouraging federal law-enforcement agencies to devote valuable time and resources toward investigating it, and increasing the likelihood of a leak that influenced the election?

Moreover, in 2020, Jankowicz promoted a letter from former intelligence-community officials asserting that the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails were part of a Russian disinformation campaign, called them “a Trump campaign product,” and months later characterized the intelligence community as having debunked “the alleged Hunter laptop.” 

Close to two years later, the emails have been confirmed as authentic by nearly every major media outlet.  

If Jankowicz was at the head of an active Disinformation Governance Board at the time, would she have withheld judgment, or urged federal agencies to actively deny the authenticity of the laptops, again unduly influencing an impending election?

The frightening answers to those questions — which emerge as a consequence of Jankowicz’s partisanship and lack of technical knowledge, not a right-wing smear campaign — explain the instantaneous and deserved backlash to the disinformation governance board. But Jankowicz, Stelter, and the rest of the progressive disinformation industry have learned — or chosen to learn — all of the exact wrong lessons from the fiasco, because to acknowledge the truth would be to discredit their entire raison d’être.

Headline Fail of the Week

It was the abortion story heard ‘round the world after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. A ten-year-old girl in Ohio had to travel to Indiana for an abortion as a result of her state’s newly implemented six-week ban.

First, it was reported in the Indianapolis Star, which cited the word of a single source, abortionist Caitlyn Bernard, as evidence. After that, it was open season on the story. The Guardian, MSNBC, CNN, Politico, USA Today, and dozens of other outlets reported on the deeply troubling tale, holding it up as representative of a bleak post-Roe v. Wade world. Last Friday, the president referenced the case, declaring that  “this isn’t some imagined horror. It is already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a ten-year-old girl was a rape victim — ten years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life.”

The only problem is that there is no evidence of such a girl existing. Close to two weeks after the Star’s original report, Bernard remains the only person on this planet to have professed to be aware of this girl, and when asked to disclosed where the child came from by the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, Bernard told him “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any information to share.” 

Perhaps there is a story like the one reported on breathlessly by so many out there, but there’s not nearly enough information to retell it as the gospel truth, especially now that the abortionist who originated it has become so shy with the bright lights on her.

Media Misses

– For Politico Playbook, Ryan Lizza and Eugene Daniels write that Morton’s The Steakhouse “steered right into the middle of the culture wars,” by issuing a statement condemning the effort to harass Justice Brett Kavanaugh at its Washington, D.C., location, where pro-abortion activists tried to get Kavanaugh thrown out of the building and forced him to leave through a back exit. That’s a bit like accusing victims of a tornado of “steering into the middle of the air wars.”

–A member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers falsely claimed that dropping gas prices — which have briefly fallen after hitting a record high — “has to do with initiatives that this White House has taken, at the president’s behest, including measures to increase the supply of oil.”

Despite Jared Bernstein’s claims on CNBC, a recent AAA report said the price drop is due to diminished demand at the pump. The Wall Street Journal said the price drop may only be temporary and explained that the falling demand is driven by some Americans “changing their driving habits as the cost of gas and many goods and services have risen.”

–Slate published an article on Monday claiming to explain “How Americans Became Convinced Divorce is Bad for Kids.” The outlet writes that while “Many Americans think it’s a shame that only 70 percent of children in the U.S. live in one home with two parents and under 50 percent live with two biological married parents,” that it is not divorce and single parenthood that has a negative impact on children, but instead issues related to “sexism, racism, homophobia, shoddy record keeping, and insufficient government support.”

NR’s Dan McLaughlin ably dismantles that argument here.