In the U.S. government, intelligence officials are not limited to the CIA. The Pentagon, for example, has its own intelligence division. So does the Department of Homeland Security, which has an Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
In theory, the DHS office, part of the nation’s larger intelligence community, focuses on providing officials with information about domestic security threats. In practice, at least during Donald Trump’s presidency, it was reportedly asked to tackle other kinds of tasks. Politico reported this morning:
In late April of 2020, a top political appointee in the Trump administration called for Department of Homeland Security officials to scrutinize an unusual topic for a national security agency: possible voter fraud in the upcoming election. A subsequent directive included a focus on mail-in voting, according to a document reviewed by POLITICO.
The political appointee in question was, not surprisingly, Ken Cuccinelli — who was a little too extreme to get confirmed by a Republican-led Senate, but whom Trump appointed to a top DHS post anyway.
And so, as the then-president, fearing defeat, worked furiously to undermine public confidence in his own country’s system of elections, one of Trump’s top guys at DHS directed intelligence officials at the agency to look for evidence of a made-up scourge that would bolster partisan conspiracy theories.
In fact, DHS intelligence officials were directed to look into, among other things, “attempts to alter, destroy, sell, or hide mail-in ballots,” instead of doing actual work.
Not surprisingly, DHS officials ended up complaining about inappropriate political pressure.
Why does this matter two years later? In part because it offers fresh evidence of Team Trump’s willingness to corrupt federal agencies. The Department of Homeland Security and its intelligence office are not partisan pawns to be moved around during an election season. Using government resources to pursue absurd Republican conspiracy theories — in effect, weaponizing DHS as a partisan tool — is an obvious abuse. But as Politico’s report went on to note, these new revelations are also of interest because of what DHS’ intelligence office did find as part of its election-season work. On Sept. 3, 2020, the office distributed a product about Russia’s efforts to undermine confidence in American election processes — specifically by using its state media to try to cast doubt on the security of mail-in voting.
So let’s take stock: The former president left for Mar-a-Lago 14 months ago, and we’re still learning about the scope and scale of his administration’s abuses.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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