And one the Trump administration is helping to hide:
The intelligence bulletin, titled “Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of U.S. Candidates to Influence 2020 Election,” was drafted to inform state and local law enforcement officials that Russian state media agencies were posting “allegations about the poor mental health of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden,” ABC News first reported on Wednesday.
But before the bulletin was distributed, senior Homeland Security officials intervened to halt publication, department officials confirmed.
This is a classic Republican tactic: If you are weak in a certain area, or guilty of something, accuse your Democratic opponent of it. In this case, Trump's own mental health has been increasingly in question (his physical health, too), and due to his Twitter obsession, there's no way in hell to hide that cognitive deterioration. So it's time to project and deflect. I would not be surprised if Trump had actually asked Putin to help with this. He did it with Ukraine. Keep in mind, Homeland Security was originally created to facilitate the dissemination of intelligence amongst law enforcement entities, not stifle it:
Officials from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis briefed Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, on the document sometime this summer, the department said in a statement. But in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Mr. Wolf said he and other career officials at the intelligence office had questioned the quality of the “very poorly written report.”
“They’re hard at work on rewriting that report, putting it in better context,” Mr. Wolf said. “I hope to see that record out soon.”
But Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration, told CNN on Wednesday that it would be highly unusual for political appointees at the department to halt an intelligence report about the Russians.
The Trump administration has long faced accusations of underplaying the threat of Russian election interference, especially when it is geared toward helping the president. Mr. Wolf has said the department is focused on disinformation campaigns and election interference. But President Trump has made clear that he expects the agency to emphasize immigration enforcement and border issues over its other missions, such as cybersecurity or information-sharing, former Homeland Security officials have said.
Of course Trump wants to quash that report until after the election (if not forever), so he won't have to "modify" his daily attacks of Joe Biden. Which is just one more piece of evidence that he is unfit for the office.
Comments
Russia has a long history doing this
There once was a KGB Major who was stationed at the Soviet Embassy in Tokyo. His cover was "cultural attache" or something equally ambiguous, but he was very smart, and very likeable. He knew everybody.
But one day he received a directive from (Moscow) headquarters to circulate an exceptionally silly piece of disinformation, a wholly concocted story about American spies posing as Arab terrorists, who attacked an oil freighter, killing everybody and sinking the ship. No way to prove it or disprove it, so the idiots in Active Measures assumed it was Good Stuff.
But the Major disagreed. He feared it would blow his cover to push this nonsense, and when they persisted, he defected to U.S. agents. It is my opinion this was very fortunate, because this guy was (possibly) on the verge of convincing Japan to purchase a lot of oil and other resources from the Soviet Union. Potentially keeping it in power a lot longer.
Flash forward to 2020, and the social media landscape is much easier to deal with. Especially when you've got idiots like Trump to retweet your bullshit to millions.