‘It wasn’t just Russia disinformation’: DHS whistleblower explains how Trump muzzled intel
The former acting Under Secretary for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security revealed how the Trump administration muzzled intelligence information during the 2020 presidential election.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace interviewed Brian Murphy, who had previously led counterterrorism at the FBI, about the multiple whistleblower complaints he filed.
The host played a clip of Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD).
"The whole world watched the storm troopers of violent white supremacy act as the vanguard of a massive violent political insurrection against the government of the United States, that smashed our windows, invaded our capitol, wounded and injured more than 140 Capitol Police officers and Metropolitan Police Department officers and left several people dead," Raskin said. "Let's be clear that the most dangerous threat facing America today comes from the forces that attacked our government on January 6th."
Wallace described the greatest threat as "domestic extremism fueled by disinformation and the disgraced ex-president's lies about the insurrection. Federal agencies under Donald Trump down played right wing extremism in order to avoid embarrassing Donald Trump."
For analysis, Wallace interviewed Murphy.
"I want to start with Russia," Wallace said. "There was a sense after the Mueller investigation ended that Donald Trump acted, conducted himself in a more emboldened manner. But what's amazing about your complaint is the effort to suppress anything bad about Russia seemed to intensify and especially as it pertained to the 2020 election. Could you tell us what that was like and what exactly they didn't want to get out?"
Murphy noted he filed three whistleblower complaints, with the final one filed in September of 2020 after "the pressure hit a tipping point."
"The question you're asking is really important, it's got to be put in the context where there was pressure on a number of fronts to suppress intelligence. Russia was probably the biggest of them as we get closer to the election, but it wasn't just Russian disinformation. It was all of those threats happening at the same time," Murphy said.
"Moving forward in 2020, at that time we knew full well that [Vladimir] Putin had identified President Trump as someone to support and denigrate the Democratic candidates who were out there. Trying to get that information out across the intelligence community and law enforcement, there were just systemic barriers and people were intimidated," he explained.
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