Meet Nina Jankowicz, Biden’s New Disinformation Czar

The Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security is establishing a Disinformation Governance Board and placing Nina Jankowicz at its head, DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed earlier this week.

Jankowicz, who will serve as executive director of the new agency, is a fellow at the Wilson Center, where she studies “the intersection of democracy and technology in Central and Eastern Europe,” and the author of two books: How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict and How to Be a Woman Online: Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back.

In her first book, published in 2020, Jankowicz, who has also served as an adviser to the Ukrainian government, “journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them.” At stake in this fight, she submits, are “the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.”

In her second book, published this year, Jankowicz concludes that “all women in politics, journalism and academia now face untold levels of harassment and abuse in online spaces,” and purports to have written “one of the definitive reports on this troubling phenomenon.”

“Drawing on rigorous research into the treatment of Kamala Harris — the first woman vice-president — and other political and public figures, Nina also uses her own experiences to provide a step-by-step plan for dealing with harassment, abuse, doxing and disinformation in online spaces,” reads the Amazon description of How to Be a Woman.

In her introduction to the book, Jankowicz imagines a situation, among other scenarios, in which a stranger on the subway mentions to her that he went to a bachelor party in Ukraine, before offering, “It’s a shame about the civil war, but this is probably the first time a young, pretty thing like you is hearing about it, I guess.”

In the ensuing pages, Jankowicz imagines a scenario in which a group of men verbally harass a young woman on the subway and outside her workplace and laments that, while the police would likely be called in that scenario, no such response occurs when harassment occurs online.

Both Jankowicz’s record and online behavior have come under scrutiny since the announcement of her new post, as she’s made plain both her disbelief in the since-confirmed Hunter Biden laptop story and her affection for Christopher Steele, the author of the discredited dossier on former president Donald Trump that helped launch the Mueller probe into his 2016 campaign.

In a series of 2020 tweets, Jankowicz sought to discredit the emails recovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop, promoting an article that she said cast “doubt on the provenance of the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story” and arguing: “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 also referenced the “laptop from hell” during one of the 2020 presidential debates and appeared to endorse an open letter, written by former intelligence officials, making the case that the contents of the laptop were part of a Russian disinformation campaign, despite the fact that the signatories acknowledge they had no evidence to support the claim.

Jankowicz told the Associated Press that the story should have been considered “a Trump campaign product.”

She also tweeted, about a podcast featuring the dossier’s author: “listened to this last night – Chris Steele (yes THAT Chris Steele) provides some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo. Worth a listen.”

On Thursday, the new member of the Biden administration defended her record, arguing that at least one of her tweets was taken out of context.

In addition to her spotty record of identifying disinformation, as well as her considerable role in promoting it, Jankowicz’s personal posts have raised questions as well.

In one video, Jankowicz takes on the role of “Moaning Myrtle,” a ghost featured in the Harry Potter series, and sings a sexualized song about the titular character:

Went looking for some prefects in the bathroom one day
But instead I found Harry and so I said “hey!”
I helped him solve the mystery of the egg
But I’d like to solve the mystery between his legs!
I hope that Harry drowns tomorrow in the lake
So that our honeymoon we can take
You know that ghosts have working ’natomies
What’s better than that – we don’t get STDs!

Jankowicz has also integrated her day job into her singing hobby.

Asked about Jankowicz on Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki professed not to “have any information about this individual.”