New documents show how disinformation expert was unfairly tarred

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It may seem like a distant memory at this point, but the conservative crusade against disinformation experts truly ramped up in 2022 with the MAGA movement’s attacks on respected researcher Nina Jankowicz. Jankowicz had been tapped to run a now-defunct panel within the Department of Homeland Security which was going to focus on the spread of harmful disinformation and devise ways to counter it. The panel was scrapped after Republicans — in particular, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan — framed Jankowicz as the face of anti-conservative citizenship and waged a smear campaign against her. Now, Jankowicz is clapping back. After being called to testify in front of the committee last year, she received help from Democratic committee members in prying loose some of the transcripts, which Jordan released Friday. The documents undermine claims from the Ohio lawmaker and other Republicans portraying Jankowicz as a liberal weapon. Just read what Jankowicz told Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, for example, when he asked if there were specific organizations she planned to seek out for help combating disinformation. She said: I really wanted to make sure that the working-level individuals at the Department of Homeland Security kind of were exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints and research on disinformation. Before Congress, in, you know, my previous testimony, I’ve always reminded everyone that disinformation is a nonpartisan issue. It affects everyone, no matter your political party. And so I consume and read a lot of different things from a lot of different institutions, and, you know, I would put that before everybody as Executive Director as well. Jankowicz even named the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation as an example of an organization she might have considered tapping for guidance on rooting out disinformation, citing its previous work on the issue. Later in the deposition, she said the board “did not have the intention to arbitrate, oversee, [or] restrict any thoughts.” And she dispelled claims about her supposed nefarious intent by noting that Democrats and Republicans had invited her in the past to testify on her expertise. “I was a witness at the request of Senator Grassley in 2018, so, clearly, some Republicans thought I was getting something right,” she said in the deposition. “My scholarship has been about arming people with truthful information, not taking away their right to free speech.” In a press release after the committee shared the deposition, Jankowicz called the move a “major victory for transparency and truth” and said it “dispels the lies” about her brief period as executive director of the disinformation board.