In a just world, Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s Disinformation Board Executive Director Nina Jankowicz would actually be pursuing her musical and Broadway ambitions. In entertainment, crazy and unhinged is often a necessary part of the brand.
But we live in Joe Biden’s World, and instead Jankowicz was tapped to police “disinformation” in the media and online for DHS. My colleague Bob Hoge outlines this creepy and Orwellian development here.
It is amazing that someone who spent her high school years in a Harry Potter-inspired rock and roll band is now a high-level government official who is being given a great deal of power over people’s lives.
Yet, here we are.
In 2005, Jankowicz was one of the lead singers and keyboardist for the band, “The Moaning Myrtles.” The name was taken from a character in the J.K. Rowling Harry Potter series of books, and their lyrics pull from the literature and the fan world of the series.
From The Moaning Myrtles blog:
Here’s where you can learn about the minds responsible for this music. We’re best friends (not sisters, despite what most people think) who live in Hillsborough, NJ.
Lauren and Nina make up The Moaning Myrtles, a piano-based wizard rock band from Hillsborough, NJ. The idea for the band was sparked in November 2005 when the best friends saw Harry and the Potters play a live show and Lauren brought up how many new wizard rock bands had started. Jokingly, Nina suggested that they start a Moaning Myrtle band. Strangely enough, Myrtle was Lauren’s first choice of a character to base a band off of as well.
As documented in their blog, Band Camp pages, and even Wiki fandom pages, The Moaning Myrtles is still in existence in some form. While Jankowicz was a part, they had a good run touring the Eastern seaboard spreading their Potter-inspired rock to the masses. They even had a MySpace page—older people, help the younger.
The featured image is from a 2008 show in Florida, taken as Jankowicz sizzles on the keyboards. The band was even featured in the New Jersey Star Ledger. They were making quite a splash for a local indie band.
The Moaning Myrtles somehow ended up in Rhode Island, and recorded a digital album that can still be purchased for $10.00.
After graduating high school and while attending Bryn Mawr College to study Political Science and Russian (according to Jankowicz’ website’s About page), Jankowicz also did (and still does) community musical theater with the Reston (VA) Community Players and The Arlington Players.
Jankowicz either slept two hours an night, or mainlined Red Bull. Studying political science, Russian language and information, and doing musical theater requires huge amounts of energy, even for someone who was in her 20s at the time.
After graduating Bryn Mawr in 2011, Jankowicz worked on her Master’s degree from Georgetown in Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, became fluent in Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian, and lived overseas in Russia and the Ukraine. Any references to her involvement in The Moaning Myrtles wizard rock band had since disappeared.
According to the Pulitzer Center website, Jankowicz debuted on the foreign policy media scene in 2017, as a Foreign Policy Interrupted Fellow, and a Fulbright Public Policy Program fellow, where she advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications issues. According to the New York Post, Jankowicz did this work through The National Democratic Institute, an organization heavily funded by national and international Labor organizations, as well as the Carnegie Institute. Democracy Now is also a funder, and this organization has been connected to election interference in foreign countries. Donald J. Trump won the presidency in 2016. Think about the four years of the Trump presidency, and the major accusation that led to investigations and Impeachment I and II: Russia! Russia! Russia!, the Ukraine letter, and then the mess of the 2020 election and the January 6 kerfuffle.
Coincidence or convenience?
My colleague Bonchie definitely leans toward the latter:
Jankowicz is (because it’s a requirement on the left these days) a big-time Russia hysteric, spreading false conspiracy theories that the Hunter Biden laptop was a “Russian disinformation campaign.” She was also a huge fan of the Mueller investigation before she turned into a pro-lockdown fanatic. Does that sound like someone who should be put in charge of dictating — from a governmental perch — what is and isn’t true for the Department of Homeland Security?
Think about that. It’d be bad enough if she were part of the FEC as some kind of government finger-wagging experiment. That alone would be insane, but she’s going to be making judgments on disinformation in regards to government targeting of “extremists”? That’s scary stuff, and it should not be understated how dictatorial it is.
Somewhere between 2012 and 2017, Jankowicz decided to reinvent herself into a foreign policy and technology “expert.” As you all know, I am a big fan of reinvention. But the transition from ditsy, musician and Broadway ingenue to serious policy scholar and now disinformation czar? That’s a huge leap, and not a very credible one at that. The few real policy wonks I know spend decades knowing a foreign country, living and interacting with its people, and perfecting their knowledge. Jankowicz becomes a so-called expert in less than than 15 years?
Pretty sus to me.
A 2018 John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) interview all but confirmed that any media information about Russia collusion and disinformation that was being spoon fed during that time, was more than likely from the hand of Jankowicz:
If you have read any authoritative source in the past two years about the Russian disinformation campaign in the U.S. media or have wondered where American policymakers get their information from, there is a strong likelihood that Nina Jankowicz influenced both the story and your knowledge of it in some way.
As I said, sus.
Jankowicz is a resident fellow at The Wilson Center (one of my favorite presidents <insert *sarcasm* emoji>), documenting, “the intersection of democracy and technology in Central and Eastern Europe.”
What exactly does that mean? I bet even she doesn’t know.
Some of her policy papers include:
- Malign Creativity: How Gender, Sex, and Lies are Weaponized Against Women Online
- Bridging the Trust Gap: How the West Can Learn from Eastern EU’s Experience Battling Russian Disinformation.
- Comparative Approaches to Countering Disinformation and Regulating Social Media in the Digital Age
As further evidence that Jankowicz was groomed to insert herself into government policy in order to do their bidding, she published a book in in July of 2020, How To Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, right in time for the 2020 Presidential Elections. Another interesting “coincidence.”
Now Jankowicz is ready to rein in disinformation, and using her musical theater skills, she put that policy focus into a jingle to the tune of a Mary Poppins‘ song.
This is the new Biden administration head of Ministry of Truth, Nina Jankowicz. She is in charge of what’s truth and fiction in America. Every time you think the Biden administration can’t get more ridiculous, they do: pic.twitter.com/SKCaLafDzv
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) April 29, 2022
Pravda meets batshit crazy. So on brand for the Biden administration.
Here's my official portrait to grab your attention. Now that I've got it: a HUGE focus of our work, and indeed, one of the key reasons the Board was established, is to maintain the Dept's committment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, & civil liberties. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/C4xiEGfhDt
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) April 27, 2022
