On Monday, a Delaware judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News by the former head of the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board.
Tucker Carlson talks more about Nina Jankowicz "Ministry of Truth" with CEO of the Federalist Sean Davis. pic.twitter.com/x5OzdduXkY
— 3sidedstory 🇺🇲 (@3sidedstory) May 3, 2022
Nina Jankowicz, who was appointed to head the Biden administration’s version of the “Ministry of Truth,” sued Fox News for exercising its First Amendment right to report on the news.
Nina Jankowicz is now planning to sue Americans exercising their rights to Free Speech and Free Press for the crime of criticizing the federal government she worked for
This is exactly why the 1st Amendment exists
To criticize cheap tyrants like her
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) March 3, 2023
In the lawsuit, Jankowicz claimed that 37 statements made by Fox News about her and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board were false or defamatory.
In dismissing the suit, Chief Judge Colm Connolly refuted each of the arguments Jankowicz claimed were false statements from Fox News using her own past comments.
According to the Post Millennial’s analysis of the judge’s ruling, 36 of the 37 statements cited by Jankowicz were not even about her, but about the Disinformation Governance Board as a whole. The remaining statement came from Fox News host Sean Hannity, who stated that the board was a department “dedicated to working with the social media giants for the purpose of policing information,” showing an image of Jankowicz on the screen. She claimed in her lawsuit that this could lead Americans to believe Hannity was talking specifically about her, but the judge declared that “the statement is not defamatory because it is not false.”
Connolly added that “the Board was formed precisely to police information and to work with nongovernmental actors.”
Responding to her claim that Fox News hosts’ comments about her being “fired” were defamatory, the judge argued that the statements — which included “Jankowicz was so absurd that she had to go away,” that she “was fired from DHS” and that she was “booted” — Connolly argued that these were opinion statements and “inherently imprecise.” He also noted that “Jankowicz does not dispute this contention in her briefing.”
Just a few weeks after the Disinformation Governance Board was created, the Biden administration paused the program and accepted Jankowicz’s resignation in May 2022, as DHS faced immense backlash over its efforts to use the board to stifle Americans’ free speech.
The judge also dismissed her claim that Fox News had defamed her by reporting that she wished to allow verified Twitter users to edit people’s posts, noting that the statements were based on Jankowicz’s own words.
“The Complaint itself quotes Jankowicz confirming in a Zoom session that she endorsed the notion of having ‘verified’ individuals edit the content of others’ tweets. Specifically, the Complaint alleges that Jankowicz stated ‘during a Zoom meeting’ that she ‘like[d] the idea’ of ‘verified people’ ‘edit[ing]’ Twitter and that she ‘like[d] the idea of adding more context to claims and tweets and other content online, rather than removing it,’” Connolly wrote.
The judge’s ruling confirmed in his ruling that all of the “statements Jankowicz had alleged were defamatory were either about the board she oversaw and not her, or were materially true.”
Fox News celebrated the ruling on Monday, declaring Jankowicz’s lawsuit “a politically motivated lawsuit aimed at silencing free speech, and we are pleased with the court’s decision to protect the First Amendment.”
Meanwhile, Jankowicz has refused to delete the GoFundMe for the lawsuit, stating that she plans to appeal the judge’s ruling.
Former Biden “disinformation tsar” Nina Jankowicz is continuing her GoFundMe campaign to fund her Fox News lawsuit, even though her case was laughed out of court. She says she will appeal. pic.twitter.com/kKX5B2R3Sf
— Andy Ngo 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) July 23, 2024
