Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall is calling on President Joe Biden to halt his Administration’s “Orwellian” attempt to initiate a disinformation board.
Marshall joined 19 other attorneys general in writing a letter on May 5, demanding that Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board, which they claim would directly violate the First Amendment, be scrapped.
“The Biden administration’s plans to set up a government board to decide whether Americans’ speech is either ‘disinformation’ or ‘misinformation’ is an unacceptable and downright alarming encroachment on every citizen’s right to express his or her opinions, engage in political debate, and disagree with the government,” said Marshall.
The Board in question is an arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which seeks to address disinformation from foreign governments.
“What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries, from the cartels, and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing in addressing this threat for years,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN.
The letter penned by AGs from across the nation claimed that it is not a coincidence that the announcement of this government board comes after Elon Musk procured Twitter.
“By its own admission, the Biden administration has been ‘flagging problematic posts’ on social media and coordinating with the private sector to regulate Americans’ free speech,” the letter read. “The President of the United States publicly urged social media companies to police ‘misinformation and disinformation’ on their platforms. Suddenly just as Elon Musk prepares to acquire Twitter with the stated purpose of correcting the platform’s censorship of free speech, you announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board.”
Marshall and the other attorneys general also criticized Biden’s appointee, Nina Jankowicz, to head the board, claiming that she had previously been guilty of “fomenting disinformation.”
Specifically, Marshall referred to Jankowicz’s previous claims that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal was a foreign disinformation campaign.
“It would be amusing that a self-proclaimed expert in disinformation like Ms. Jankowicz has proven to be so bad at identifying it, except that you have placed her in charge of doing so on behalf of the United States government,” the letter continued.
“The Disinformation Governance Board, by its very existence, and almost certainly by design, threatens to ‘enforce silence’ when Americans wish to express views disfavored by the Administration...This is unconstitutional, illegal, and un-American. Unless you turn back now and disband this Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board immediately, the undersigned will have no choice but to consider judicial remedies to protect the rights of their citizens.”
Marshall joined attorneys general from Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia in writing the letter to the Biden administration.
To connect with the author of this story, or to comment, email craig.monger@1819news.com.
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