Donald Trump’s acting Homeland Security chief has ordered the dismantling of all the department’s advisory boards to guard against “misuse of resources” after the Biden administration’s disastrous attempt to create a Big Brother-style “Disinformation Governance Board,” The Post has learned.
In a memo dispatched Monday evening, Benjamine Huffman mandated the “termination of all current memberships on advisory committees with DHS, effective immediately.”
“Future committee activities will be focused solely on advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS’s strategic priorities,” the memo went on.
The Biden administration was ripped in the spring of 2022 for organizing the Disinformation Governance Board, which said in its mission statement that “[t]he spread of disinformation can affect border security, Americans’ safety during disasters, and public trust in our democratic institutions.”
Despite its promise to protect “privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties” the board’s creation was mercilessly attacked by Republicans and free speech advocates, who saw it as a thinly-veiled excuse unconstitutionally monitor and suppress Americans’ speech.
Adding fuel to the firestorm as the fact that board’s director, Nina Jankowicz, had repeatedly cast doubt on The Post’s reporting about former first son Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Majorkas quietly discontinued the board weeks after it was announced, leaving Jankowicz to find other employment as the head of a nonprofit that as of April 2024 was insisting that Russia had “interfered in our democracy” during the 2016 election.
Until Huffman issued his order Monday night, DHS contained some holdover organizations from the Biden administration, including the “Homeland Intelligence Advisory Board,” and the “Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board,” among others.
Trump’s pick for DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, has vowed to focus her mission at the agency on direct threats impacting the US, including terrorism and the flood of migrants at the border.
She’s also said she will work alongside Trump to shut down Biden border policies that allowed more migrants into the country.
“There’s several of these programs that need to be eliminated,” she told senators at her confirmation hearing last week, “and we need to ensure that we’re following legal immigration laws.”
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