Trump’s homeland security chief intervened to downplay Russia threat in intel report, watchdog says

The report says Chad Wolf ordered a DHS report withheld ‘because it made President Trump look bad and hurt President Trump’s campaign’

Chad Wolf (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf ordered alterations to a report detailing foreign attempts to interfere in the 2020 election which downplay Russian efforts on behalf of former president Donald Trump — and also delayed release of the report — because it made Mr Trump “look bad,” according to a newly-released report by the department’s inspector general.

The report found that an “intelligence product” drafted by a DHS analyst who monitored Russian state media who’d “noticed an uptick in Russian state media efforts to question candidate Joseph Biden’s mental health” in April 2020 was changed to include material “describing overt efforts by Chinese and Iranian influence actors to promote unsubstantiated narratives” regarding Mr Trump’s mental health in a “tone box” which highlighted the part about Mr Trump.

The section on Russia’s actual efforts regarding Mr Biden was shortened to “approximately one page,” it said.

The report also found that Mr Wolf, who was never confirmed by the Senate, “participated in the review process multiple times despite lacking any formal role in reviewing or approving the product,” and did so even though the DHS Secretary is meant to have no role “in reviewing or approving intelligence products”.

The DHS Inspector General also reported that Mr Wolf asked the Acting DHS Undersecretary for Intelligence to refrain from disseminating the “product” to the public “because it made President Trump look bad and hurt President Trump’s campaign” since, in his estimation, “the concept that Russia was denigrating candidate Biden would be used against President Trump”.

“The Acting Secretary disrupted dissemination of the product when he asked for the product to be ‘held’ during the July 8 meeting. This resulted in a delay in the dissemination of an intelligence product intended to inform stakeholders about foreign influence efforts relating to the 2020 U.S. Presidential election,” the report said.