Trump’s Dept of Homeland Security Guts Task Forces Protecting Elections From Foreign Meddling

The headline of this post seems like clickbait but the truth can't be that bad.  This is the part where you learn the facts ARE THAT BAD.

Two teams of federal officials assembled to fight foreign election interference are being dramatically downsized, according to three current and former Department of Homeland Security officials.

The task forces, part of the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), were assembled in response to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. One focuses in part on securing election infrastructure and the other focuses on foreign influence efforts, including social media disinformation campaigns.

One of the task forces is now half the size it was a few months ago...and there’s no indication that DHS senior political leadership will staff it up or sustain it.  Instead, there are concerns it will completely wither away. 

The other task force also shrank significantly shortly after the midterms and before its members produced a thorough assessment of what happened during the 2018 elections.

What were these task forces supposed to be doing which is now being neutered?

The election task force has worked to shield election infrastructure from foreign efforts to change vote counts. And the foreign influence task force is working to publicly reveal efforts by foreign actors to shape American political discourse on social media—in the hopes of significantly expanding Americans’ understanding of the threat. It was also designed to improve DHS’s coordination with foreign allies who face the same threat, and to help DHS better alert the private sector about threats.

The changes to the task forces may make it harder for them to realize those goals....  “It won’t be 2016 all over again—the threat is changing,” said a former DHS official. “A thinly staffed task force working on that is not going to be equipped to keep up with the adversary.”

This goes way, way beyond just Trump himself.  From the far-right ring leaders surrounding him to the supposedly "mainstream" Republicans, THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR NATION.  Our elections have been attacked and continue to be and they DO NOT CARE.

“The clear assessment from the intelligence community is that 2020 is going to be the perfect storm,” said a DHS official familiar with the teams. “We know Russia is going to be engaged. Other state actors have seen the success of Russia and realize the value of disinformation operations. So it’s very curious why the task forces were demoted in the bureaucracy and the leadership has not committed resources to prepare for the 2020 election.”

“Our key allies are wondering why the U.S. is not more coordinated and not more proactive in dealing with this,” said the DHS official. “They don’t understand why the U.S. is not getting its act together.”

“The Trump administration intelligence chiefs in their worldwide threat assessment clearly stated that the use of influence operations from countries like Russia, China and Iran poses a significant threat to the country,” said John Cohen, the former deputy undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at DHS. “If these reports are true, it’s highly disturbing that the department and the administration are not more focused on dealing with that threat.”

Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-dhs-guts-task-forces-protecting-elections-from-foreign-meddling