Dealing with a tide of mail ballots generated by the Covid-19 epidemic is not the only risk hanging over the November 3 presidential election. Another threat, which has become familiar since 2016, has gathered strength in recent weeks, fueled by controversial decisions by Donald Trump’s administration: that of interference by foreign powers.
The investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, in 2019, then the latest report of the bipartisan investigations conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee both concluded that the interference attributed to Russia during the last election was real. presidential. While its electoral impact has never been established, the President of the United States has never ceased to question it.
The first director of US national intelligence, Dan Coats, a former Republican senator appointed by Donald Trump, had established a regular congressional information mechanism. His current successor, John Ratcliffe, reduced the device on August 28 to simple notes sent to elected officials empowered to receive confidential information, arguing to “Leaks Unwanted. The move sparked Democrats ‘amazement and Mr Coats’ disapproval.
Destabilization campaign
This stir was rekindled on September 9 when a whistleblower, a former senior official in the Homeland Security Department, accused his acting official, Chad Wolf, of asking him to stop providing him with reports on a possible interference from Russia, allegedly favorable to the president, and to privilege information implicating Iran and China.
Brian Murphy, former assistant deputy secretary for intelligence in this department, assured that the order came from Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien. The White House and the relevant department denied the accusations.
The former senior official added another grievance, unrelated to possible foreign interference. He assured that the acting assistant secretary of the same department had ordered him to modify part of a report devoted to American internal threats to mitigate that posed by white supremacists that Donald Trump never mentions, while he does not ceases to denounce the risks posed by the movement “antifa” (for “anti-fascist”) and the extreme left.
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