Former DHS disinformation chief Nina Jankowicz sues Fox News for defamation

Nina Jankowicz, who once oversaw a Department of Homeland Security disinformation board, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News. In the suit, Jankowicz alleges that the media outlet made false statements about her, thereby harming her career and threatening her safety.

Jankowicz’s tenure as the head of the disinformation board faced criticism from Republicans who claimed that it was an overstep by the government to control free speech on social media. However, the board was short-lived, being operational for only a few weeks before being put on pause, leading to Jankowicz’s resignation.

“Even after achieving their stated goal of driving me out of government and ending the board, they kept using me as a punching bag,” Jankowicz told The New York Times. “It shouldn’t be something we just accept — that the most powerful cable network in the world can attack individuals willy-nilly and not face any consequences after they ruin their lives.”

The lawsuit asserts that Fox News propagated destructive lies about Jankowicz during her time on the disinformation board, resulting in damage to her professional reputation and personal safety. According to the complaint, Fox News mentioned Jankowicz by name more than 300 times over the course of eight months.

“Fox’s coverage of Jankowicz was neither news nor political commentary; it was cheap, easy entertainment untethered from the facts, designed to make consumers believe that Jankowicz could and would suppress their speech,” her attorneys wrote in the suit. “Fox chose to lie about Jankowicz deliberately.”

As the director of the disinformation board, Jankowicz garnered significant attention from various media outlets due to controversies surrounding her, including tweets she shared on the 2016 presidential election, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and mask-wearing at the beginning of the pandemic. It subsequently was proven that the information she shared on those topics was incorrect.

Defamation cases are notoriously challenging to win, and Jankowicz will need to demonstrate not only that Fox News made false statements but also that they did so with malice. It is worth noting that Fox News recently settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million over claims made on the network about the 2020 election, although the outcome of that case does not necessarily predict the result of Jankowicz’s lawsuit.

As of now, Fox News has not commented on the latest lawsuit brought against the network by Jankowicz.