❓WHAT HAPPENED: Former Biden government disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz has officially lost her long-shot defamation lawsuit against Fox News, after an attempt to appeal a lower ruling to dismiss the case failed.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Nina Jankowicz, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and Fox News.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Monday, September 15, 2025.
💬KEY QUOTE: “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.” — Nina Jankowicz
🎯IMPACT: While it is unclear—other than attorney’s fees—what additional legal or financial exposure Jankowicz has, she has informed her readers that she’s renaming her GoFundMe page to the “Nina Jankowicz Legal Fund” even though it appears to still be just a standard GoFundMe and not a formally filed Legal Defense Fund.
Former Biden government disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz has officially lost her long-shot defamation lawsuit against Fox News, after an attempt to appeal a lower ruling to dismiss the case failed. Jankowicz, a former official with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who oversaw efforts to root out supposed “disinformation” in the media, attempted to sue the Fox News network, alleging they had defamed her in their description of her work and the circumstances of her removal from DHS.
“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,” Jankowicz wrote in a post on Substack, going on to engage in an astounding degree of legal disinformation herself: “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.”
Notably, Jankowicz attempts to skirt the fact that she, as a former government official, is a public figure and the legal bar to defamation is far higher, due to long-standing court precedents to ensure the protection of First Amendment rights. However, Jankowicz continues her play for pitty, arguing: “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.”
Humorously, given that the court merely upheld long-standing precedent, the former Executive Director of the Disinformation Governance Board at DHS, sometimes dubbed the Ministry of Truth, dabbbles in her own ‘disinformation,’ claiming: “The court has effectively given permission for pundits to baselessly declare open season on people with whom they disagree, making it almost impossible for anyone to serve their country without the fear of being tarred and feathered by a powerful cable news channel with a rabidly devoted audience.”
While it is unclear—other than attorney’s fees—what additional legal or financial exposure Jankowicz has, she has informed her readers that she is renaming her GoFundMe page to the “Nina Jankowicz Legal Fund” even though it appears to still be just a standard GoFundMe and not a formally filed Legal Defense Fund.
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