[ad_1]
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcas testified to Congress about the disinformation board “apparently misleading”, accusing Senate Republicans in a letter Tuesday demanding Democrats call Mr.
Mr. Majorcas told lawmakers at a hearing on May 4 that the board had “not yet started working”, but new documents show the board was dismissed earlier this year, the secretary signed a charter, and board members are already discussing it on social media giant Twitter.
Republicans said Mr Majorcas “misrepresented” the board’s mandate by saying he would not be involved in monitoring the activities of the Americans. But the senators said the talking points, prepared by former board director Nina Jankowicz, “show that the Department is actually watching over American citizens, and that the work of the Board is focused on domestic threats.”
And Mr. Majorcas, at the hearing in May, rejected Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul’s suggestion that the board might be interested in overseeing the debate on masking the pandemic as part of its disinformation purpose. But last week, Sens. New documents released by Charles E. Grassley and Josh Hawley listed the effectiveness of masks as “something the board is concerned with.”
“The American people deserve transparency and honest answers to important questions about the true nature and purpose of the Disinformation Governing Body, and it’s clear that Minister Majorcas has not provided them to the public or to this committee,” Sen-led senators said. Rob Portman, of Ohio, is the top Republican on the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.
They asked Gary Peters, the Michigan Democratic Senator who chairs the committee, to call Mr. Majorcas back to appear one more time.
The Washington Times reached out to Mr. Peters’ office and Homeland Security for comment.
Ms. Jankowicz left her post and Mr. Majorcas suspended the board, asking two former senior officials from the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to review the board’s stance.
The prospect of the secretary being able to reinvigorate the board means that this remains a problem for members of Congress.
Documents released by Mr Grassley and Mr Hawley last week showed that one of the board’s co-chairs, Undersecretary for Policy Robert Silvers, had scheduled a meeting with Twitter to talk about “an opportunity to discuss operationalizing public-private partnerships between DHS and DHS”. . Inform Twitter as well as Twitter executives about DHS’s efforts to address misinformation and disinformation, including the new board.
According to Iowa and Missouri Republicans Mr. Grassley and Mr. Hawley, an informant who provided the documents said Ms Jankowicz may have been hired because of her relationship with executives at Twitter.
Mr. Majorkas insisted that Ms. Jankowicz was hired because she was an expert in disinformation. Republicans said the expertise had expanded to spread it—Ms. Jankowicz sold out now discredited theories about President Trump and a Russian bank and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The documents released by Mr. Grassley and Mr. Hawley also envisioned efforts to link state, local, and even nonprofits and the private sector to “remove content at their discretion”.
Mr. Portman and other Republicans also said in their letter Tuesday that they were “troubling” because the documents had to come from an informant. At the hearing on 4 May, Mr Hawley had requested the documents from Mr Majorca and promised to present them “unless there was a legal prohibition from us”.
Tuesday’s letter was sent to Mr. Paul, Mr. Hawley and Sens from Wisconsin, in addition to Mr. Portman. It was signed by Ron Johnson, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mitt Romney of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida.
While answering a question about his ministry’s efforts to work with Spanish-speaking communities to combat electoral disinformation, Mr. Majorcas announced the board’s existence in his testimony to Congress in late April.
The new board of directors is at the center of these activities, the secretary said.
The department said in a later note that the board has no public role, but that the department should have an internal police force for its current efforts.
Mr. Majorkas later called the board an internal working group with no operational mandate. He said that if anything, the board will ensure that civil liberties are respected by all components of the department.
The Grassley-Hawley documents suggest a more active role in disinformation than this, with its charter saying it will serve as a point of contact with state, local, tribal and territorial partners, private sector and civil society actors.
[ad_2]
Source link