Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas misled Congress when he testified under oath in May that the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) “had not yet begun its work,” two Republican senators claim.
In fact—according to documents obtained from a DHS whistleblower by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—planning, decision-making and concrete work by senior DHS officials, including Mayorkas, had begun at least as early as September 2021.
In addition, the documents provided to the senators show that Mayorkas was asked by DHS officials tasked with planning and establishing the DGB for his approval to proceed as early as January 2022 and that Mayorkas gave his approval for doing so in February 2022.
A Different Picture
“On May 4, 2022, Secretary Mayorkas testified under oath to Senator Hawley that the Disinformation Governance Board ‘had not yet begun its work.’
“On May 1, 2022, the secretary told the news media that the board would be focused on disinformation ‘from foreign state adversaries [and] the cartels’ and would not monitor American citizens,” the GOP senators said in a joint statement.
“At the White House on May 2, White House press secretary Jen Psaki claimed that the board would be focused on ‘human traffickers and other transnational criminal organizations,’” the senators said.
Despite those claims by Mayorkas and Psaki, Grassley and Hawley said in their statement that the documents they were provided reveal a different picture of the DGB’s development.
The documents said the DGB was conceived from the beginning in part to monitor the domestic speech of American citizens concerning “conspiracy theories about the validity and security of elections” and “disinformation related to the origins and effects of COVID-19 vaccines or the efficacy of masks.”
They added Mayorkas and his team sought a partnership with social media outlet Twitter designed to censor content unapproved by the DGB and planned a meeting with Twitter executives to discuss such a joint effort.
In addition, the papers show the DGB charter that was officially drafted in January 2022 was personally signed by Mayorkas on Feb. 24, 2022, with the stipulation in the document that the secretary’s approval marked the immediate effect of the charter.
Mayorkas told the Senate in May that the DGB had not yet begun its work even as a meeting with social media executives was apparently being staffed by Nina Jankowicz, who had only been nominated in April by President Joe Biden to be the board’s executive director, according to the documents.
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