DHS protected Trump in 2020

This new report from the Department of Homeland Security was just released. It should be a big deal. It alleges that the report was held back, to protect former President Donald Trump.

The document reads:

>This allegation included a number of specific examples, including one alleging that during a July 8, 2020 meeting, the Acting DHS Secretary told the Acting USIA an intelligence product should be “‘held’ because it ‘made the President look bad.’” The complaint also alleged the product was updated without the Acting USIA’s input, and the updated product equated actions of China and Iran with the actions of Russia, and therefore was misleading and inconsistent with intelligence information. In November 2021, pursuant to an agreement with DHS, the (redacted) withdrew his whistleblower complaint.

Now, notice the important part. This was not about national security or Russian interference. This was about not making the president look bad. Donald Trump is anyways concerned about how he looks, not the country.

We know that Russia interfered in 2016. From this same report, Russia relied on questioning Joe Biden’s mental acuity. This is something that the American far-right has adopted.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is some coordination. Whether this starts at places like 4chan, or Fox News it does not matter. Again from the report:

In April 2020, CYMC started drafting an intelligence product titled “Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of US Candidates to Influence 2020 Electoral Dynamics,” IA-44399–20 (the product).15 The intelligence analyst who authored the product told us after Super Tuesday,16 he noticed an uptick in Russian state media efforts to question candidate Joseph Biden’s mental health. He said he discussed the issue with CYMC’s mission manager, who mentioned similar actions occurring during the 2016 election. The analyst believed foreign efforts questioning a candidate’s health were worth exploring because they could impact voters’ willingness to vote for that candidate and began drafting the product.

This was not crazy, since health became an issue. But this was one of the two candidates. Tucker Carlson does this regularly and gets played on Russya24 every so often as well.