'Whose Idea Was It?': Hawley Grills Biden Official Over Scuttled DHS Disinformation Board?

i'm brittany lewis with forbes breaking news senator josh hawley questioned a witness about the dhs disinformation governance board during thursday's senate homeland security committee hearing the disinformation governance board was paused in may only three weeks after it was announced dhs officials said that the board was designed to protect free speech reports claimed that partisan fights and right-wing attacks on the board's leader nina jankowicz led to its demise holly questioned dhs official samantha vinograd about jankowitz directly asking if she knew about jankowitz's quote many comments spreading disinformation listen in to see how the witness responded the witnesses for being here miss vinograd if i could just start with you you work in the office of strategy policy and plans is that right senator let me just say i had my first visit to the state of missouri on friday oh good uh deeply deeply where did you go i went to jefferson city okay i just want to share you're totally impressed by your homeland security professional well thank you very much i look forward to going back yes i work in the office of strategy policy implants and you work with uh robert silvers there is that right the under secretary i do sir your name is on a memo with mr silvers dated september 13th 2021 the subject is organizing dhs efforts to counter disinformation this is the memo that recommended the establishment of the disinformation board it was turned over to me and to senator grassley by a whistleblower i have to tell you we've had the darndest time getting any information about this board out of your agency we've asked and we've asked members of this committee have asked we would know virtually nothing had it not been for this whistleblower who turned over a tranche of documents all of which are now public so since i have you here and you wrote the memo let me just ask you a question or two about it whose idea was it to establish this board senator the department of homeland security has engaged in disinformation work pertaining to threats to the homeland and the american people for over a decade with respect to this internal working group there were discussions about the need to ensure that there were guard rails in place across the department to protect civil rights and civil liberties and privacy and as such there were discussions about creating this internal working group well yeah all of that i noticed is is in the passive uh the passive voice my my question is whose idea was it to set up the you use the word working group but i noticed that that's not at all what the memo says it doesn't call it a working group the directive that mr mayorkas eventually signed off on does not make this board a working group it had managerial authority it had directive authority all of that's in these documents so let's please not go back to those tired and now disproven talking points so let me come back to my question whose idea was it to establish the board was it yours uh senator without going into internal deliberations of the department of homeland security there were a series of discussions among personnel i'm not going to go into the internal deliberations of the department the why not you're under oath i am under oath sir that said these are internal deliberations at the department as as you know sir the charter was signed by the secretary of homeland security yeah i only know that by the way because of the whistleblower documents we would not know that otherwise senator the charter was signed by the secretary of homeland security the charter included excuse me the working group included representation does the charter call it a working group since you bring up the charter um this was a working group sir does the charter call it a working group uh i don't recall the term no the answer is it does not so was it your idea to establish the board as i testified senator under oath the establishment of the working group was a decision taken a conversation that was had among multiple individuals at the department okay so you're not going to answer my question ms jankowitz nina jankowicz she was appointed to run this disinformation board how was she chosen uh ms jankowitz was chosen consistent with practices for the hiring and vetting of political appointees walk me through that process who was involved um i don't know the full scope with that process you weren't involved in it i was involved in one piece of that process what was the piece that you were emotionally i spoke with ms jankowitz at what point um as uh as part of the standard process for political appointees i spoke with ms jankowitz what time frame would this have been uh this would have been um sir i don't want to give you an incorrect answer okay give me a just a frame um early 2021 okay january i don't recall the exact date sir i can um get back to you on that okay january february time period perhaps that would be early 2021 the secretary signed the charter i believe in february of 2021 uh when did the secretary sign off on ms jankowitz being the head of the board um senator i don't know that the secretary signed off on ms jankowitz or not and i'm not i'm not aware he testified it was his decision i believe the secretary testified that he was ultimately responsible for ms jankowitz i don't know so it wasn't his decision senator i just said i don't know the full scope did you recommend favorably ms jankowicz to the secretary after speaking with ms jankowicz i was impressed by her expertise during her conversation and noted uh my recommendation um to others in the department were you so you recommended yes i think that sounds like it's a yes you recommend it favorably did you at the time that you spoke with her and recommended with her were you aware of her long history of comments on twitter and other platforms of disinformation anti-free speech rhetoric and so forth which has since become i think it's safe to say infamous uh senator i was aware of ms jenkins's expertise in the field of disinformation and was impressed by her expertise did you know about these did you know about her her many comments spreading disinformation about russia about the trump administration about conservatives secretary morkus just to come by comparisons that he was not aware of any of this at the time i'm just curious were you aware at the time you recommended him or her to him senator in my capacity as acting assistant secretary for counter-terrorism threat prevention and law enforcement policy i um had not read all of miss jankowicz's tweets but as i said was aware of her expertise in this well when you say you hadn't read all of her tweets does that mean that she i'm sure has a lot of tweets but were you were you familiar with the ones that have since become public okay you were not aware at the time did you did anybody bring those to your attention at any time before they became publicly released in this process this vetting process not to my recollection okay so somehow she got through this vetting process with no one including all the way up to the secretary apparently aware of what she had said on these public platforms i find that sort of extraordinary um what's what was the white house involved in the selection of ms jankowicz i'm not aware of the full scope the processor as a presidential um as a political appointee the standard processes were followed so you to your knowledge the white house was not involved is that fair my knowledge is i'm a political appointee the white house was involved in my process so i believe that that is um that is standard practice for the white house to be involved so they okay so you think that they were involved in the selection of miss tankowitz i'm not aware of the full scope of the hiring or vetting process it was the same as pertains to other politicians well i i i'm just trying to get at what your knowledge is so what to your knowledge i'm not asking what you think may have happened but to your knowledge was the white house involved in selecting ms jankowicz just yes or no if i really don't know sir okay you have no idea all right what's the current status of the of the disinformation board to your knowledge well it's on pause the second what does that mean exactly it means the disinformation governance board never met the secretary has asked the homeland security advisory committee of the hsac to review how the department can most effectively address disinformation and how to do so in a way that protects civil rights and civil liberties he has also asked that the hsac review how the department can be as transparent as possible with the american public and increase trust in the work that we do the hsac was asked to conduct the review within 75 days and while that work is pending the disinformation governance board or the dgb just is on pause it's not meeting there's not work underway last question another senator's waiting to ask questions did the board ever meet any members of the board ever meet with twitter executives we know we have minutes of planned meetings with twitter executives to ask for cooperation in tracking speech did that ever happen at any point to your knowledge i disagree uh with your characterization of did the meetings with the twitter executives ever happen to your knowledge if i can finish i disagree with your characterization of uh the um purpose of a meeting that never happened the meeting with twitter never happened okay so your knowledge it never happened listen i've got to let other senators question i'll just say that i regret that it has taken months to get the most basic information about this board and again we would know none of this none had it not been for a whistleblower who turned over these documents frankly that is totally totally unacceptable thank you mr chairman hey senator hawley senator carper you're recognized for your questions thanks uh welcome to uh to each of our witness i want to start with this cultist did you pronounce your name call this that's correct senator all right thank

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 912,531

Keywords: Sen. Josh Hawley, DHS, Senate

Id: 0kKMi3It6r0

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 14 2022