An explosive whistleblower complaint filed by a senior Department of Homeland Security aide this week has shed new light on efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to deceive Congress and suppress and manipulate intelligence about Russian political interference and the related threat of white supremacy in advance of the 2020 election.
In the complaint, Brian Murphy, the former head of DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, laid out a damning pattern of behavior by top Trump appointees ― most notably Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and his second-in-command, Ken Cuccinelli ― to distort or block intelligence reports that could undermine Trump’s political objectives or reflect poorly on a president who has openly courted both the Kremlin and far-right extremists in America.
Murphy’s complaint is a shocking document that would upend any other administration in recent memory. But it’s also just another data point in an incendiary emerging story: Russia is clearly trying to influence the presidential election, and the Trump administration has doggedly tried to keep both Congress and the public in the dark about those efforts. Democratic lawmakers have also tried to sound the alarm but have been handcuffed by what they say is the Trump administration’s unnecessary classification of election security intelligence, particularly with regard to the Russian threat.
Last month, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) issued a dire warning in a Washington Post op-ed after reviewing classified material that he described as “more chilling” than anything special counsel Robert S. Mueller III turned up in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“The warning lights are flashing red. America’s elections are under attack,” Blumenthal wrote. “[T]the Trump administration is keeping the truth about a grave, looming threat to democracy hidden from the American people.”
Murphy, a Marine veteran and former FBI special agent who said he was responsible for all intelligence activities at the Department of Homeland Security from March 2018 until being reassigned last month, has produced some of the strongest evidence to date that Trump has politicized elements of the intelligence community in ways that security experts and members of Congress say put the country at great risk.
