In a column for MSNBC, a former government official whose career ended shortly after it began in the Joe Biden administration applauded a recent Supreme Court ruling that vindicated her and slapped aside House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) for attempting to interfere with protecting the public from misinformation.
As disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz explained, she was only weeks into her job when she was included in a lawsuit — along with President Joe Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauici among others — that became Murthy v. Missouri which alleged the Biden administration was censoring American citizens via social media.
This week the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, shot down the lawsuit that was linked to Jordan's war on government disinformation experts.
According to Jankowicz, "As a defendant, I was named in a list of dozens of Biden administration officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, several Cabinet secretaries and the president himself. These were people I had never met. I’d never discussed policy with them, let alone conspired with them to establish a vast censorship regime," adding, "I also realized it was meant to smear those named as treasonous and freeze work that had been set up to protect our information environment ahead of key events including the 2024 election. Republicans were playing the long game."
RELATED: 'A stinging rebuke': Jim Jordan under fire after Supreme Court quashes conspiracy theory
Pointing out that she subsequently resigned, which dropped her from the lawsuit, she added that her life and career were disrupted by conservatives chasing a bogus conspiracy theory.
Summing up her experience, she wrote, "But the damage this case and others like it have caused cannot be undone with a pronouncement from the Supreme Court. Twenty-five months after I resigned from government — the entirety of my son’s short life — my family still contends with regular threats. I’ve been forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees in various challenges that have stemmed from the lie that I wanted to censor my fellow Americans: to get a protective order against a cyberstalker, to defend myself in a frivolous civil suit, to secure representation in Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio’s absurd investigation of disinformation researchers."
Writing, "My colleagues across academia and think tanks are dealing with similar challenges. Stanford University’s Internet Observatory, one of the nation’s pre-eminent organizations studying online harms, was forced to shut down due to these baseless allegations because of the financial and political pressure it faced," she added "Over the past eight years, our legislators have punted that responsibility and opted instead for political theatrics that are high on fantasy and low on facts."
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