After years of tension between President Donald Trump's administration and the United States intelligence community, a new whistleblower complaint filed by a former senior Department of Homeland Security official alleges a grim climate of bias and politicization within the Department of Homeland Security's intelligence apparatus. In particular, it accuses DHS leadership of working to minimize intelligence findings about Russia's threat to the 2020 US election and beyond, as well as the national security risk from rising white supremacist ideology.
The complaint comes from Brian Murphy, who ran DHS's intelligence branch until the end of July and was then reassigned to the agency's management division. Murphy was transferred after controversy over revelations, which he disputes, that his department had produced intelligence reports about journalists and protesters in Portland, Oregon. In his complaint, Murphy alleges that he faced repeated pressure from acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf to curtail intelligence findings, including those about the threat of Russian meddling.
"Mr. Wolf stated to Mr. Murphy the intelligence notification should be 'held' because it 'made the President look bad,'" the complaint says.
The document also describes directives from acting deputy DHS secretary Kenneth Cuccinelli to modify assessments about the threat of white supremacy, and to highlight the activities of "left-wing” organizations. The complaint additionally alleges that DHS officials overstated intelligence findings to Congress about the threat of suspected terrorists entering the US through the southwest border.
The common thread throughout the complaint: Allegations that Wolf and others sought to alter or manipulate intelligence conclusions to suit the President's political agenda. If true, this would confirm what Trump himself has indicated many times, that he prizes loyalty to his administration's agenda over objective and unbiased intelligence gathering. And it ..
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