If the name Nina Jankowicz doesn't ring a bell, it should. She was -- for a brief moment -- the head of Joe Biden's "Disinformation Governance Board." In 2022, Biden's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said such a board was necessary for "countering disinformation that threatens the homeland, and providing the public with accurate information in response, is critical to fulfilling the Department’s missions."
Critics called the Disinformation Governance Board the "ministry of truth," and they weren't wrong. Jankowicz herself had no problem spreading disinformation in the service of the Democratic Party, including a troubling social media history that claimed Trump supporters would show up to the polls with weapons to "intimidate voters" and pushing the Russian collusion hoax.
In 2023, Jankowicz filed a defamation suit against Fox News, claiming the outlet told "'destructive' lies that harmed her career and threatened her safety," according to Axios.
That suit was tossed out by a judge last year, and NBC News reported the judge, "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."
Fox News applauded the ruling, saying, "This was a politically motivated lawsuit aimed at silencing free speech and we are pleased with the court’s decision to protect the First Amendment."
Jankowicz and her attorneys appealed that dismissal.
Yesterday, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Jankowicz again:
Disinfo czar Nina Jankowicz reveals some "sad" news to her audience. She has lost her defamation lawsuit against Fox News. She's "furious" at the judges.
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) September 16, 2025
She's renaming her GoFundMe to the "Nina Jankowicz Legal Defense Fund" https://t.co/msgWCz0MTw pic.twitter.com/V4iX7K6uw6
Here's some of what Jankowicz wrote on her Substack:
I’m writing with bad news: my appeal of the lower court’s decision to grant Fox’s motion to dismiss was not successful. This marks the end of my defamation suit against Fox, but not the end of my fight for the truth.
We always knew this was an uphill battle. Public figures have a high bar to clear in defamation claims, and we were up against a powerful, moneyed defendant.
That said, I am more than disappointed with the Third Circuit’s decision; I am furious. Since I resigned my appointment at DHS 40 months ago, I have become well-acquainted with an American justice system that too often protects offenders instead of victims. It is a justice system that, in this crucial moment, doesn’t seem capable of reconciling decades-old precedent with the realities of violent political rhetoric in the digital age. As the nation reels from the highest profile political assassination in decades, following a year of other high profile acts of political violence, it’s hard not to interpret the Third Circuit’s decision as a shrug: to the suffering Fox’s coverage caused me, to the suffering the network’s lies have caused others, and to our suffering democracy, abdicating the role the courts might play in healing our poisoned political discourse.
In the ruling, the Third Circuit determined that:
Jankowicz argues that the many statements made by Fox about the Board were also of and concerning her because "Fox repeatedly used Jankowicz's photo when discussing the Board" and because "Fox often referenced the Board and Jankowicz in the same statement or the same segment." But these allegations are not enough to transform criticism of the Board into statements of and concerning Jankowicz.
In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), the Supreme Court sought to avoid "transmuting criticism of government, however impersonal it may seem on its face, into personal criticism, and hence potential libel, of the officials of whom the government is composed." Doing so, the Court held, would "strike[ ] at the very center of the constitutionally protected area of free expression." Accordingly, when a government official sues for defamation, "[t]here must be evidence showing that the attack was read as specifically directed at the plaintiff."
Jankowicz's position—that criticism of government is transformed into actionable defamation when a television program displays an image of a government official or references a government official's name in the same segment—is precisely the sort of attack on core free expression rights that Sullivan sought to avoid. Nor does merely referencing an official in the same segment that a critique of government is made—nor using an official's photo as "a visual placeholder," in that segment—show that an "attack was read as specifically directed at the plaintiff."
Jankowicz vowed to continue to "speak up, to inform, to advocate, and to resist the assault on our rights and freedoms being perpetrated by the Trump Administration and its allies, even as doing so comes at great personal expense and consequence" and called her now-defunct suit an "act of resistance" against Fox News.