As new details emerge on President Joe Biden’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” Republicans are holding Democrats responsible for where its information would have come from.
According to a letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), whistleblower documents reveal the DHS planned to partner with big tech companies such as Meta and Twitter to monitor so-called disinformation.
Hawley and Grassley are demanding answers about the board that received major backlash for censoring speech over the internet, which was allegedly created back in September of 2021.
In the letter, the senators argue that the board would have focused on political disagreement such as elections and the effectiveness of the Wuhan coronavirus vaccines.
“The First Amendment of the Constitution was designed precisely so that the government could not censor opposing viewpoints – even if those viewpoints were false…DHS should not in any way seek to enlist the private sector to curb or silence opposing viewpoints. It is therefore imperative for DHS to provide additional clarity regarding its policies and procedures for identifying and addressing ‘MDM,’ as well as its efforts to ‘operationalize’ public-private partnerships and the steps it is taking to ensure that it does not infringe on the constitutional rights of American citizens.”
In the 31 page whistleblower document, the board's leader Nina Jankowicz may have been hired because of her ties to Twitter, alleging that the social media platform could exchange analytics with the proposed disinformation board to censor users.
Hawley and Grassley say the department was working to “operationalize” its relationships with private social media platforms to implement its goals.
The senators are calling on the Biden administration to come clean on the origins of the board and its goal of infringing on American citizen’s First Amendment rights.