Manipulation of Trump intel reports raises red flags about threat of his re-election: former FBI official

In a column for MSNBC, a former FBI Counter-Intelligence official wrote that an inspector general report that showed that intelligence reports submitted when Donald Trump was president were manipulated to make him look better should be cause for alarm -- particularly if he stands any chance of being re-elected.

In his column, Frank Figliuzzi noted the April 26th watchdog report that stated, "President Donald Trump’s DHS diluted and delayed a 2020 intelligence report that told of Russia’s plans to aid Trump’s re-election with propaganda casting doubts on candidate Joe Biden’s health," should set off alarms.

Writing, "...the OIG investigated whether then acting Secretary Chad Wolf and his leadership team properly handled the drafting, approval and dissemination of a report revealing that Russia’s government had a propaganda strategy to denigrate candidate Biden’s health. The report found that their treatment of the intelligence and analysis report was anything but proper under the standards of the intelligence community," the ex-FBI man added, "The OIG’s report confirmed what we already knew."

Figliuzzi suggested there may be more to come, but more importantly, what has now been confirmed provides a window into what to expect if Trump regains the Oval Office.

RELATED: Trump's long history of siding with Putin against Ukraine memorialized in brutal CNN story

The "... OIG report gives us insight into the ghost of the Trump administration’s past. But it offers a picture of what a Trump present might have looked like had he won the election, and foretells what a future Trump administration would look like – particularly regarding Russia, the U.S. intelligence community and the battle for Ukraine," he suggested.

In particular, he speculated that, if Trump was still in office now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine, Americans might now be subjected to misinformation about how the war is going for the Russian strongman the former president counts as an ally.

Add to that, he wrote that it's not beyond the realm of possibilities that Trump would share U.S. intel with Putin.

"We can’t discount that possibility. He’s disclosed highly classified intelligence to the Russians, at the expense of an ally, before," he wrote before adding, "Would a new Trump administration honor such improvements to the intelligence process? Would they even read the OIG findings? More than likely, we’d be faced with an even greater contrast between the Biden and the Trump approaches to intelligence."

You can read more here.