(Ken Silva, Headline USA) House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, announced Monday that he’s subpoenaed Chip Slaven, Viola Garcia, and Nina Jankowicz to appear for a deposition.
Slaven and Garcia are former National School Boards Association officials who co-signed the September 2021 letter to President Biden requesting federal law enforcement assistance to target parents voicing concerns at local school board meetings. That letter led to an Oct, 4, 2021, memorandum from Attorney General Merrick Garland that directed the FBI to establish a “threat tag” to investigate Americans.
The NSBA has since rescinded its letter to Garland and apologized for it, but Garland’s memo is still in effect.
Jankowicz, for her part, is the former executive director of the Department of Homeland Security’s now-disbanded Disinformation Governance Board, which was dubbed the “Ministry of Truth” for its Orwellian undertones.
Jankowicz found herself in the conservative media spotlight last year due to her astonishingly ignorant opinions on what constitutes disinformation—including her citation of Russiagate participant Christopher Steele as an authority on misinformation, and her false claims in late 2020 that reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop were part of a Russian disinformation plot.
Jankowicz has also come under fire for her singing, including one video where she’s seen parodying a Christmas song to make it sexually explicit, and in another she adapts the Mary Poppins “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” song into a tune about fake news and disinformation.
Jankowicz’s antics were apparently so embarrassing that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas distanced himself from her during a Senate Homeland Security hearing last year.
“Let me repeat myself and add an additional fact: One, we do not discuss internal hiring processes; two, I was not aware of that fact [her statements about Steele]; three, as the secretary of DHS, I am responsible for the decision of the department; and four, it is my understanding that Ms. Jankowicz is a subject-matter expert in the field in which she will be working,” Mayorkas said last May, shortly before the disinformation governance board was canned.
Jordan said in his letter to the three former officials that the subpoenas were necessary because they refused to be interviewed voluntarily.
“We have repeatedly sought information from you concerning your official actions and duties as a DHS employee and former Executive Director of the Board, including how the Board intended to define disinformation, how it planned to collect information and from what sources, how it anticipated countering disinformation, and how it proposed to protect First Amendment rights,” Jordan wrote to Jankowicz—a similar message he gave to Slaven and Garcia.
“To date, however, you have declined to comply voluntarily with our request for a transcribed interview.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
