US intelligence official told to halt Russian election meddling threat assessments: Whistleblower

Department of Homeland Security official said in a whistleblower complaint released Wednesday that he was pressured by more senior officials to suppress facts in intelligence reports that President Donald Trump might find objectionable, including information about Russian interference in the election and the rising threat posed by white supremacists.

The state, Brian Murphy, alleged that senior DHS officials also pressed him to improve reports so they would reflect administration policy goals and that he was demoted for refusing to go with the changes and for filing confidential internal complaints about the conduct.

Murphy, a former FBI agent and Marine Corps veteran, was demoted in August from his post as principal deputy under secretary at work of Intelligence and Analysis. He's seeking to be reinstated in a complaint filed with the DHS Office of Inspector General.

Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, released the complaint, which he said contained “grave and disturbing” allegations. He said Murphy has been asked to give a deposition to Congress within a study into intelligence collection by DHS related to its response to protests in Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere.

“We are certain to get to the bottom of this, expose any and all misconduct or corruption to the American people, and eliminate the politicization of intelligence,” the California Democrat said.

A Homeland Security spokesman, Alexei Woltornist, said the department generally will not touch upon referrals to the inspector general but denied Murphy’s allegations. “DHS looks forward to the results of any resulting investigation and we expect it'll conclude that no retaliatory action was taken against Mr. Murphy,” he said.

The complaint came the same day that acting Secretary Chad Wolf, who has been nominated by Trump to lead the agency, gave a “state of the Homeland” speech where he said DHS is attempting to thwart election interference from any foreign power and all threats irrespective of ideology.

“DHS stands in absolute opposition to any type of violent extremism whether by white supremacist extremists or anarchist extremists,” Wolf said. “We will continue our day to day efforts to combat all varieties of domestic terror.”

Murphy said in his complaint that he was directed by Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy DHS secretary, to change a section of a written report to help make the threat posed by white supremacists less severe. He was told to play up the threat posed by left-wing groups to echo administration talking points around civil unrest following a protests over the killing of George Floyd.

Murphy said he refused to alter the report because doing so would “constitute an abuse of authority and improper administration of an intelligence program.” He was then removed the project.

He said he made numerous reports on Russian disinformation efforts to senior DHS and administration officials between March 2018 and March 2020. The details are classified rather than included in the whistle-blower complaint.

Then, in July, Wolf told him to attend any reports on Russian election interference because they “made the president look bad,” in line with the complaint. He also said Wolf told him to report on interference by China and Iran, rather than Russia, and the ones instructions originated from White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien. Murphy said he objected and was excluded from future meetings about them.

Trump has repeatedly resisted claims of Russian interference, including doubting findings by U.S. officials and lawmakers that Russia meddled in the 2016 campaign to greatly help him and sow chaos in the electoral process. He has dismissed reports that Russia is continuing to interfere in the 2020 race, claiming that China is the more pernicious threat, despite the fact that a statement from intelligence officials last month said Moscow was directly trying to undermine Democrat Joe Biden.

Murphy said that, after he was removed from focusing on a DHS intelligence report, a draft was leaked to the media in which Russia’s interference was positioned on the same footing as activities by Iran and China in a manner that was “misleading and inconsistent with the actual intelligence,” the complaint said.

Murphy found DHS in March 2018 from the FBI, where his career included being assigned to the brand new York field office on Sept. 11, 2001. In his complaint, he alleged that efforts to manipulate the intelligence he oversaw started under former Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

He said Nielsen and her deputies pressed him to vastly overstate the amount of migrants apprehended at the southwest border who've confirmed links to any terrorist organization. That occurred as the Trump administration was rolling out tougher measures against against the law immigration. Murphy said he declined to verify an inflated figure, saying to take action would be not merely improper but illegal. The secretary nonetheless provided the wrong figure to Congress.

Cuccinelli, he said, pressed him to improve reports on conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras as the administration was seeking to halt a surge of people seeking asylum from Central America at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Mr. Cuccinelli expressed frustration with the intelligence reports, and he accused unknown ‘deep state intelligence analysts’ of compiling the intelligence information to undermine President Donald J. Trump’s policy objectives regarding asylum,” he said in the complaint.

Murphy said that over the summertime he was instructed by Wolf and Cuccinelli to improve assessments on protests to ensure “they harmonized” with Trump’s statements on the involvement of antifa and anarchists in the demonstrations in Portland and elsewhere. He said he told them he would only report accurate information.

Shortly thereafter, Wolf reassigned him to the management division. That followed media reports that Murphy’s unit collected information on journalists within the DHS response to the protests. Murphy said the reports were incorrect and Wolf agreed but said it could be “politically good” to move him while the acting secretary hoped to be nominated to the secretary post by Trump.

The complaint, which also asks that officials who retaliated against Murphy get written reprimands, was filed by Mark Zaid, a prominent attorney who also represented the whistle-blower who spurred the Trump impeachment inquiry.

Zaid said in a statement that Murphy “followed proper, lawful whistleblower rules in reporting serious allegations of misconduct” and would cooperate with congressional investigations in to the matter, especially in a classified setting.