Trump loyalists interfered to downplay Russia election threat – whistleblower

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/09/trump-whistleblower-russia-election-threat

 Julian Borger in Washington
Wed 9 Sep 2020 17.31 EDT

Trump loyalists running the Department of Homeland Security manipulated intelligence reports to play down the threat of Russian election interference and white supremacists and exaggerate the threat of antifa and anarchist groups, according to the department’s former top intelligence official.

The official, Brian Murphy, said he was demoted in August from his position running the department’s office of intelligence and analysis because of his refusal to go along with the fabrication of intelligence to match Donald Trump’s rhetoric, and for making formal complaints about the political pressure. He filed a whistleblower reprisal complaint on Tuesday.

Murphy was transferred to a DHS management position after his team was found to have collected information on reporters and protesters in Portland, Oregon. In his complaint, he claims the office “never knowingly or deliberately collected information on journalists, at least as far as Mr Murphy is aware or ever authorized”, and he described the reporting as “significantly flawed”.

He insists the real reason for his transfer was his refusal to manipulate vital intelligence on national security.

Murphy alleges that the efforts to falsify DHS intelligence date back to 2018, when the then homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, asked his office to inflate the numbers of known or suspected terrorists crossing the border with Mexico, in support of Trump’s demand for a border wall.

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According to Murphy’s testimony, Nielsen and her successor, Chad Wolf, continued to exaggerate the terrorist threat at the border in 2019, while being aware of the real figures.

Murphy’s most serious allegations concern the effort to downplay Russian meddling in the election while it was under way. In May this year, Murphy says, Wolf told him “to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran”.

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According to the whistleblower complaint, a homeland threat assessment (HTA) drawn up by Murphy’s intelligence analysts in March this year was also blocked by Wolf and other DHS political appointees because of its sections on Russian interference and the white supremacist threat.

Murphy was told by his superiors he “needed to specifically modify the section on white supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe, as well as include information on the prominence of violent ‘leftwing’ groups”. When he refused, the HTA was taken out of his hands.

“It is Mr Murphy’s assessment that the final version of the HTA will more closely resemble a policy document with references to antifa and ‘anarchist’ groups than an intelligence document,” his complaint says.

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