WATCH: Former Biden Disinformation Czar Nina Jankowicz Refuses To Reveal Who Funds Her Nonprofit, the American Sunlight Project

‘Sunlight for other people, but not for your donors,’ Rep. Michael Baumgartner says

Former Biden misinformation czar Nina Jankowicz refused to reveal the donors of her self-described transparency group, the American Sunlight Project, including whether liberal megadonor George Soros is among them.

“Your organization, the American Sunlight Project, claims to have a commitment to transparency that apparently does not extend to disclosing its donors,” Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R., Wash.) said to Jankowicz during a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. “Has the American Sunlight Project received funding either directly or indirectly from George Soros or his foundations, including the Open Society Foundation?”

“I’ve received a lot of threats for speaking out, and so I’ve decided that we are going to abide by the rules that other 501(c)(4)s in our country abide by. And we are not required to disclose our donors—small or large—because I frankly don’t want them to be threatened the way that I have been,” Jankowicz said.

“So sunlight for other people, but not for your donors,” Baumgartner said.

Jankowicz heads the project, which aims to “ensure that citizens have access to trustworthy sources to inform the choices they make in their daily lives.” In 2022, she led the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board, but it was shuttered after three weeks following intense criticism, including over Jankowicz’s own peddling of misinformation. In October 2020, she condemned reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop as a “Russian influence op.”

This is not the first time Jankowicz and the Sunlight Project have refused to identify their donors. After the group last year accused the Washington Free Beacon of anti-Semitism for reporting on Soros’s ties to a left-wing group that raised funds to bail out anti-Israel protesters, the Free Beacon asked if the liberal billionaire, his son, or any of their affiliates were among the Sunlight Project’s backers.

“As a matter of policy, just like so many of the thousands of C4s in this country, we don’t disclose funder information, and we don’t plan to,” Sunlight Project spokesman Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos replied. “That’s primarily to protect people. Generally, we get attacked very unfairly by a lot of outlets, unfortunately, and obviously Nina has been victim of a lot of attacks—harassment, death threats, and things of that nature. So our goal is to protect people, and we’re not required to, so we’re not doing that.”