Former DHS Sec. Chad Wolf buried reports of Russian interference in 2020 election to protect Trump
This post was originally published on this site
Considering the news over the Supreme Court stripping away the rights of half the nation, breaking down the wall between church and state, and then using the bricks from that wall to lay a nice, sturdy path that can be followed to destroy a dozen other rights, it’s easy to understand that a few things might have slipped under the radar lately. But this shouldn’t.
On the surface, this April 26 report from the Inspector General’s Office at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is simply about the fact that data collectors within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) failed to distribute information properly. In other words, “DHS actions related to an I&A intelligence product deviated from standard procedures.” That description makes it sound as if someone failed to check the appropriate boxes on a form and deserves a little slap on the wrist.
Except that’s not the case. The “intelligence product” was the report detailing Russian interference in the 2020 election. The “deviation from standard procedures” was actually a months-long cover-up by Acting Sec. of DHS Chad Wolf designed explicitly to help Donald Trump win reelection by spreading rumors about Joe Biden.
In the process of tracking foreign interference in the 2020 election, DHS had collected information on how Russia was injecting concerns about the health of then-candidate Joe Biden into the campaign. That information was supposed to be included in reports that were regularly briefed to Congress. Only Wolf “asked the product be held because it made President Trump look bad and hurt President Trump’s campaign.”
Actual analysts and agents within DHS did everything right. It was entirely DHS leadership who did something explicitly wrong, for the very specific reason of helping Donald Trump.
Based on our interviews with relevant officials, as well as our document review, it is clear the Acting Secretary asked the Acting USIA to hold the product from its pending release. We interviewed the Acting USIA, who told us the Acting Secretary asked the product be held because it made President Trump look bad and hurt President Trump’s campaign—the concept that Russia was denigrating candidate Biden would be used against President Trump.
Not only did the Wolf engage in a blatant cover-up of Russia’s interference in the 2020 election, by doing so he allowed claims about President Biden’s health—claims that are still widely believed within Republican ranks—to go unchallenged. That these claims were actually coming from a deliberate Russian propaganda campaign was buried. The action also prevented the public from getting confirmation that Russia was once against interfering in the election, as it had in 2016, with the intention of benefiting Trump.
Wolf’s action denied Congress and the public the information that should have been provided concerning Russia’s actions, allowed Russia to continue its interference, and caused damage to President Biden. Trump was protected from the public finding out Russia was again working to protect him. Biden was allowed to be harmed.
Wolf even stepped in to give special attention to the reports in the months before the election, making sure that the reports were reworded in ways that benefited Trump. Reports were altered or delayed, even though Wolf wasn’t supposed to take part in preparing these documents.
The acting secretary participated in the review process multiple times despite lacking any formal role in reviewing the product, resulting in the delay of its dissemination on at least one occasion.
Wolf acted not just to cover up information, but to distort analysis for political purposes.
And that’s not the only time Wolf’s team did something like this. This March 4 report from the DHS inspector general shows another cover-up that took place in DHS at the tail end of Trump’s time in the White House, and at the time Trump and members of his staff were actively working to overturn the outcome of the election that, in spite of Wolf’s efforts, went against Trump.
In this case, the topic was the “wild time” Trump had called for on January 6 and a number of reports captured by DHS analysts indicated this event was likely to generate violence. Again and again, departments at DHS had the knowledge of potential violence on Jan. 6. Again and again, they failed to pass along any warning. And even the report that did go out “was not as widely disseminated as I&A’s typical intelligence products.”
Although an open source collector submitted one product for review on January, 2021, I&A did not distribute the product until 2 days after the events at the U.S. Capitol. Additionally, I&A’s Counterterrorism Mission Center (CTMC) identified indicators that the January 6, 2021 events might turn violent but did not issue an intelligence product outside I&A, even though it had done so for other events. Instead, CTMC identified these threat indicators for an internal I&A leadership briefing, only.
Finally, the Field Operations Division (FOD) considered issuing intelligence products on at least three occasions prior to January 6, 2021, but FOD did not disseminate any such products ultimately. It is unclear why FOD failed to disseminate these products.
Republicans loved to spread the private text messages from Lisa Page and Peter Strzok concerning their feelings about Trump before the 2016 election. Strangely enough, these text messages from the DHS’s Office of the Chief Security Officer have gotten much less air time.
Both the cover-up of Russian interference and the cover-up over Jan. 6 show the extent to which Wolf and others had weaponized DHS into a tool to collect information possibly harmful to Trump and hide it away from the public, Congress, and agencies that might take effective action. They turned the agency that was supposed to reveal the truth in order to protect the nation, into one that is dedicated to suppressing the truth in order to protect Trump.
They turned the Department of Homeland Security into a kind of governmental National Enquirer, capable of finding Trump scandals in advance and sitting on them. And Trump didn’t even have to write a check.