Trump Administration Continues to Aggressively Erode Election Security

You probably didn't notice but as of two weeks ago, all three of the major US government entities - DOJ, DHS, and ODNI - have now taken steps that appear to weaken election security.

With the November presidential election about 50 days away, recent actions and reports over the last week from all three of the government departments responsible for protecting the vote - the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence - raise new concerns about the Trump administration’s commitment to a free and fair election.

Even as senior government officials continue to raise alarms about foreign actors seeking to attack the election, the major entities of federal government that share responsibility for election security....have taken steps that appear to undermine or compromise the nation’s ability to conduct a fair and free election in November and combat foreign interference.

Number One:

....in a surprise move, director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe announced that he was ending verbal, in-person congressional briefings on election security ahead of November.... the move... takes away Congress’ ability to question intelligence analysts directly about election threats. 

Ratcliffe... possesses such scant national security credentials that he was forced previously to withdraw when Trump originally wanted to nominate him as DNI last summer.  Earlier this year, though, a minority of the US senate confirmed him for a role that has previously usually been held by career military or intelligence officers—generals, admirals, or former directors of intelligence agencies themselves.

“This is a shocking abdication of its lawful responsibility to keep the Congress currently informed, and a betrayal of the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff said in a joint statement.

Number Two:

Attorney general William Barr’s decision to replace, weeks before the election, the career official who for the last decade has led the Justice Department’s national security Office of Law and Policy, effectively the department’s in-house legal counsel that ensures that counterintelligence and counterterrorism activities are legal and appropriately authorized.  Brad Wiegmann is a 23-year veteran of the Justice Department... His replacement, Kellen Dwyer, is a political appointee, a junior cybercrime prosecutor.... When I asked a former senior Justice Department official whether Wiegmann’s replacement was actually a big deal, the response was swift and short: “Profoundly.”

Number Three:

.... sometime in July, the Department of Homeland Security halted the release of an intelligence bulletin meant for federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, entitled “Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of US Candidates to Influence 2020 Election.”  The bulletin was submitted for review on July 7.  Less than an hour later, the department’s chief of staff, John Gountanis, emailed, “Please hold on sending this one out until you have a chance to speak to [acting secretary of homeland security Chad Wolf].”  The bulletin, which mentioned Chinese and Iranian information operations as well, primarily focused on a Russian campaign to critique and raise questions about Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s health.

Wolf, a one-time Capitol Hill staffer who is not a lawyer and has never served in law enforcement, the military, or the intelligence world, spent the decade preceding the Trump administration as a lobbyist at a little-known and now defunct DC lobbying firm... He stepped into a role that, from its creation after 9/11 until the Trump administration, had been exclusively held by former prosecutors or governors, most of whom had been federal judges, US attorneys, or state attorneys general.

The fix is in.

Each of the three government officials—Barr, Ratcliffe, and Wolf—has taken concrete actions that at least has the outward appearance and possibility of hamstringing, blocking, or de-emphasizing efforts to secure what will clearly be a fraught and high-tension election. Each move would be concerning on its own, but the combination is uniquely troubling....

....all three decisions stem from officials and department leaders who have given ample reason to doubt their good faith. And in democratic elections, there’s little difference between the appearance of legitimacy and legitimacy itself. Thus moves by DHS, DOJ, and ODNI are so worrisome specifically because they appear to compromise the integrity of the election.

Barr has been one of the fiercest partisans and defenders of Trump, famously skewing the conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in attacking the 2016 election.... Barr has taken actions that appear to compromise the integrity and independence of the department... Barr echoed Trump’s recent attacks on voting-by-mail, saying the technique, long employed safely and securely across the country for absentee balloting and the five states that already primarily vote by mail, was “playing with fire.”

...both Wolf and Ratcliffe are astoundingly unqualified for their current roles—literally their only qualifications for their current jobs appear to be a fierce political loyalty to Trump himself.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/trump-election-security-dhs-doj-odni/