Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Ken Cuccinelli reportedly instructed department employees and other career officials to modify and essentially outright lie in intelligence reports to fit Donald Trump’s fascist rhetoric.
According to DHS whistleblower Brian Murphy, a veteran law enforcement official who until recently ran the agency’s intelligence branch, accuses both Wolf and Cuccinelli – who are Trump appointees – of being leading figures behind an effort from the department to change intelligence assessments to play up nonexistent, left-wing threats from antifa and “anarchists” to fit Trump’s nonsensical rhetoric to the American public. Meanwhile, as Wolf and Cuccinelli reportedly tried to demonize leftists, the duo tried to downplay the real domestic threat of White supremacists out of concern on how “the initial claims would reflect on the President” according to a source close and familiar with the claims raised by Murphy.
CNN:
A whistleblower is alleging that top political appointees in the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly instructed career officials to modify intelligence assessments to ensure they matched up with misleading public comments from President Donald Trump about Antifa and “anarchist” groups, according to documents reviewed by CNN and a source familiar with the situation.
Specifically, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Ken Cuccinelli, both Trump appointees, directed officials to change intelligence assessments based on Trump’s political rhetoric, an order the whistleblower says amounted to an abuse of authority, according to the documents.
Both Wolf and Cuccinelli also tried to alter a report to downplay the threat posed by White supremacists and instead emphasize the role of leftist groups due to concerns about how the initial language would reflect on the President, according to a source familiar with the claims raised by the whistleblower.
Whistleblower refused to change intelligence assessments
Murphy says that despite the pressure form Wolf and Cuccinelli, he refused to change the intelligence assessments stating that he would only report factual evidence according to the complaint filed with the DHS inspector general.
Initial assessments of the domestic threats described White supremacists as “presenting the most lethal threat” to the Homeland which would obviously go against basically everything Trump has said about civil unrest in the United States and the role groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys have played in that. Instead, modified drafts that were never publicly released apparently due to Murphy’s reluctance and refusal to play along with Wolf and Cuccinelli’s bullshit were changed to say “domestic violent extremists” failing to point to any specific right-wing group. This all despite right-wing groups being responsible for “two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020” according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Wolf and Cuccinelli also looked to change the narrative with foreign threats
But… Wolf and Cuccinelli weren’t just looking to change domestic intel assessments according to Murphy’s complaint, fitting Trump’s foreign narrative was also high on their list and something the duo were certainly looking to do to protect the President’s nonsense.
As liberals continue to push their own Russia narrative, Wolf responded by “instructing” Murphy “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.”
“Mr. Wolf stated that these instructions specifically originated from White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien,” according to the complaint. “Mr. Murphy informed Mr. Wolf he would not comply with these instructions, as doing so would put the country in substantial and specific danger.”
Murphy was also asked to support the xenophobic rhetoric coming from former DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to “ensure the intelligence assessments he produced for Secretary Nielsen’s review supported the policy argument that large numbers of [known or suspected terrorists] were entering the United States through the southwest border.” Murphy meanwhile said that a more accurate number “consisted of no more than three” during the previous year while the DHS was looking to inaccurate inflate the number to 3,000.
Obviously, Wolf, Cuccinelli, and Nielsen have denied these allegations with Nielson’s attorney calling the accusations “defamatory”.
Lastly, before any liberal begins to rail against Donald Trump and his attempts to change the narrative and target left-wing groups, let’s not forget that Joe Biden is also all-in on political repression against political groups in the United States. Like Trump, Biden has condemned anti-fascists — which is what antifa literally stands for — while calling on anarchists to be “prosecuted”.
So, either Trump and Biden are either totally naive to what anarchism and antifa actually is or their intentions are well rooted in the continued rule of the U.S. oligarchy.