Clearly, we have more earth-shattering stories to follow today, but don't dismiss this as minor in the schemes behind them. The irony of this outcome hit record levels too, but that also is not the main story here. 

This morning, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit by self-proclaimed disinformation expert and one-time censorship board chief Nina Jankowicz. Jankowicz had sued Fox News for defamation involving 37 separate statements that she claimed were false and defamatory. -- ie, 'disinformation.' Federal judge Colm F. Connolly dismissed the case because Jankowoicz' claims turned out to be false and, well ... disinformation-y, at least:

The lawsuit from Nina Jankowicz alleged that Fox had defamed her on numerous occasions, leading to waves of online attacks and threats of violence after the formation of the Disinformation Governance Board, where she served as a director.

In May of 2022, just weeks after its launch, the Department of Homeland Security paused the board’s work and accepted Jankowicz's resignation. The board was officially dissolved and its charter rescinded in August of that same year.

In rejecting Jankowicz's claims, the judge said that 36 of the 37 statements made on Fox News programs were about the disinformation board and not Jankowicz. The judge ruled that the remaining statement — which was also a reference to the board and not Jankowicz, despite showing an image of her as it was said — was not disinformation because it was a factual statement that matched the wording in the board's own charter describing its purpose.

That makes it sound as though Judge Connolly dismissed the suit on a technicality. That technicality exists, but the larger problem is that the statements that Jankowicz claimed to be lies were in fact were "substantially true." That applies to all of the statements that the so-called disinformation expert claimed to be false, Connolly concludes in his ruling:

Fox contends, and I agree, that Jankowicz has not pleaded facts from which it could plausibly be inferred that the challenged statements regarding intended censorship by Jankowicz are not substantially true. On the contrary, as noted above, censorship is commonly understood to encompass efforts to scrutinize and examine speech in order to suppress certain communications. The Disinformation Governance Board was formed precisely to examine citizens' speech and, in coordination with the private sector, identify "misinformation," "disinformation," and "malinformation." D.I. 31-1 at 10. For the reasons discussed above, that objective is fairly characterized as a form of censorship. ... 

Finally, the alleged defamatory statements that Jankowicz wanted to give verified Twitter users the power to edits others' tweets also are not plausibly pleaded as not substantially true. To the contrary, the Complaint itself quotes Jankowicz confirming in a Zoom session that she endorsed the notion of having "verified" individuals edit the content of others' tweets. Specifically, the Complaint alleges that Jankowicz stated "during a Zoom meeting" that she "like[d] the idea" of"verified people" "edit[ing]" Twitter and that she "like[d] the idea of adding more context to claims and tweets and other content online, rather than removing it." D.I. 26 ,r 108.

Accordingly, regardless of whether the challenged defamatory statements are opinion, they cannot support Jankowicz's defamation claim because the Complaint does not plausibly allege that they are not substantially true.

Accordingly, Judge Connolly dismissed the complaint on several bases, including the non-applicability of New York defamation law to the issues in the lawsuit. However, Connolly mainly dismissed it because Fox's statements were not just almost entirely about the Disinformation Governance Board rather than Jankowicz personally, but that those statements were substantially true.

In other words, Joe Biden's erstwhile Disinformation Czar has trafficked in ... disinformation. 

Now, nuisance lawsuits are hardly big news. Hunter Biden withdrew one against Fox News late yesterday after his father withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, and that would have been more interesting in court had it proceeded. 

However, this result is well worth noting beyond the headline to emphasize the dangers of putting government in charge of "disinformation policing." The discernment of factual truth in a society with free speech belongs to the participants in the public square, not the government. The government too often has its own interests in mind and lots of incentive to curtail dissent and criticism. Jankowicz' lawsuit demonstrates her own specific unsuitability to run any Speech Police function, but far beyond that, why government is entirely unsuited for that role as well. 

We dodged a bullet with Biden's Ministry of Truth effort, but that fight is not over. Too many in the federal bureaucracy, the Biden administration, Congress, and the media want Big Brother to police speech and dissent in the United States despite the explicit prohibition of such activity in the US Constitution. And all of them want government to silence any dissent and debate that exposes their lies. 

That's why it's so important to have independent media survive. The Protection Racket Media and their Big Tech allies hid Biden's condition from voters, and worse yet, actively suppressed anyone who dared to raise it. They labeled it "misinformation" and "cheap fakes," and until the debate blew the lid off the cover-up, they allied with Democrats to marginalize critics and dissenters. 

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