Less than two months before the presidential election of November 3, troubles are mounting for Donald Trump. On Wednesday, September 9, records revealed that he had intentionally “downplayed” the Covid-19 epidemic and in the evening, in a complaint, Brian Murphy, a US intelligence official, accused the White House of having ordered him to stop reporting information about Russian interference in the presidential election.
This complaint was drafted as part of a “whistleblower” procedure, a format which allows a public servant normally subject to confidentiality to make known clearly illegal actions.
“Mid-May 2020, Chad Wolf [secrétaire à la sécurité intérieure des Etats-Unis] asked Mr. Murphy to stop escalating intelligence reports on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead report on interference from China and Iran ”, wrote the whistleblower in a complaint filed on his behalf by the Inspector General of the Ministry of Internal Security. “Mr. Wolf said these instructions came directly from National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien”, adds the document.
According to the complaint, Mr. Murphy was also asked to modify an official US intelligence document on white supremacists. “To mitigate the dangerousness of this threat and to include information on the importance of violent left-wing groups”.
The White House responded by saying that Mr. O’Brien had never sought to dictate the priorities of intelligence services over the election or any other matter. Murphy, who was responsible for intelligence matters in the Department of Homeland Security, was relegated to a less important post in August, due to his refusal to give in to pressure from his superiors, he says.
Russian interference
According to US intelligence agencies, Russia interfered in the 2016 US election, for the benefit of Republican Donald Trump, whose campaign team has been accused of colluding with Moscow.
At the end of a long investigation which poisoned the first half of the mandate of the billionaire New Yorker, the special prosecutor Robert Mueller had explained not to have found of “Sufficient evidence” of an understanding between Russia and the entourage of candidate Trump, but described a series of troubling pressures exerted on his investigation.
Still according to intelligence agencies, there are risks that Russia will still interfere in the November 2020 election. The Trump administration, of which Iran is the bête noire and which is engaged in a diplomatic, economic and technological conflict with China, has been accused by its detractors of lacking firmness vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
