Nina Jankowicz, who was in line to become the Biden administration’s “disinformation czar” under a short-lived plan to create a Disinformation Governance Board, is crying foul after she lost an appeal of a ruling that sent her defamation lawsuit against Fox News to the landfill.
In July of 2024, Jankowicz lost her initial bid to sue Fox News for defamation. She had claimed Fox’s coverage of the 2022 furor over the creation of the board and its subsequent dissolution crossed the line.
“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,” Fox News said. at the time, according to NBC News.
On Sept. 12, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit said the district court got it right.
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.
She’s renaming her GoFundMe to the “Nina Jankowicz Legal Defense Fund” https://t.co/msgWCz0MTw pic.twitter.com/V4iX7K6uw6
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) September 16, 2025
“The District Court dismissed Jankowicz’s complaint, finding that the allegedly defamatory statements were not actionable because each was either: (1) not of and concerning Jankowicz; (2) opinion; or (3) substantially true,” the ruling said.
The ruling noted that Jankowicz said all criticisms of the board by Fox were criticisms of her, because Fox often showed her picture while criticizing the board.
However, the ruling said “these allegations are not enough to transform criticism of the Board into statements of and concerning Jankowicz.”
Should Jankowicz be investigated for attempting to deprive Americans of freedom of speech?
“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,” the ruling said, referencing the landmark NY Times vs. Sullivan case that raised the bar for libel suits from individuals involved in public affairs.
But Jankowicz said she is right and the judges are wrong.
Calling herself a “disinformation researcher,” Jankowicz posted online that she was “furious” at the loss, claiming the justice system “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,” she wrote.
She claimed the ruling allows “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.”
Claiming that her appointment and the furor created were a “fake controversy that forced me to resign from my government appointment,” she said that judges were wrong in saying what Fox said about her was opinion.
However, she noted that she remains willing to take cash through the “Nina Jankowicz Legal Fund.”
As noted by Axios, the trial court ruling said 36 of 37 statements Jankowicz contested focused on the board and not her.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Colm Connolly wrote that a statement by Fox News host Sean Hannity, that “the Board was a ‘department … dedicated to working with the special media giants for the purpose of policing information’” was “not defamatory” because the statement was “not false.”
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