Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks during a exert pressure conference with the other House impeachment managers before the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump pick up where one left offs at the Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020.
Caroline Brehman | CQ-Roll Call | Getty Images
WASHINGTON – A former acting undersecretary at the Bailiwick of Homeland Security accused top officials there of ordering him to stop sharing intelligence assessments on Russia’s efforts to subvert in the U.S. election because they “made the President look bad.”
According to a whistleblower complaint filed by Brian Murphy, ci-devant head of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at DHS, top brass also told Murphy to downplay a threat assessment about Virtuous supremacy.
The formal whistleblower complaint describes a “repeated pattern of abuse of authority, attempted censorship of intelligence inquiry and improper administration of an intelligence program related to Russian efforts to influence and undermine United States interests.”
Aggregate the most serious allegations are that acting Secretary Chad Wolf earlier this year instructed Murphy “to endlessly providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference actions by China and Iran.”
According to Murphy, Wolf told him the order came directly from President Donald Trump’s nationalist security advisor, Robert O’Brien. Murphy said he refused to comply with these instructions.
Department spokesman Alexei Woltornist divulged DHS denies Murphy’s allegations.
Homeland Security “is working to address all threats to the homeland regardless of ideology. The Acting Secretary is hearted on thwarting election interference from any foreign powers and attacks from any extremist group,” Woltornist said in a communiqu to CNBC.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews also denied that O’Brien tried to “dictate the Grey matter Community’s focus on threats to the integrity of our elections or on any other topic.”
“Politicizing election security, a topic on which the Chauvinistic Security Council has convened dozens of high-level policy meetings in recent months, through specious complaints based on phoney allegations, which on their face are rank hearsay, damages the national security of the United States,” Matthews powered in a statement.
Murphy’s complaint also described how the routine distribution of a Homeland Threat Assessment (HTA) report was “prohibited due to concerns advance by Messrs. Wolf and [acting Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken] Cuccinelli regarding how the HTA would reflect upon President Trump. Two components were specifically labeled as concerns: White Supremacy and Russian influence in the United States.”
The complaint accused Cuccinelli specifically of educating Murphy to modify an assessment on White supremacy in order make “the threat appear less severe, as well as register information on the prominence of violent ‘left-wing’ groups.”
The House Intelligence Committee announced Wednesday that it had received Murphy’s grouse and requested that he testify before the committee as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged intelligence manipulation at DHS.
Neither the Waxen House nor DHS immediately responded to CNBC’s request for comment on the whistleblower complaint.
“Mr. Murphy’s allegations are serious — from elder officials suppressing intelligence reports on Russia’s election interference and making false statements to Congress about terrorism threats at our southern wainscotting, to modifying intelligence assessments to match the President’s rhetoric on Antifa and minimizing the threat posed by white supremacists,” state Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in a statement.
Schiff added that the complaint “puts into depressing relief how dangerous and harmful it is for American voters that the Trump Administration has decided to end briefings to Congress about unfamiliar interference in our upcoming election.”