[White Supremacy\2020 Election]
The Nation\Ken Klippenstein: “While the Trump administration publicly downplays the rise of the far right, Homeland Security anticipates ‘physical threats’ to the 2020 election.”
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Last week, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whistleblower told the press that agency officials had ordered him to downplay the threat of white supremacist terrorism.
But a recent DHS intelligence assessment about physical threats to the 2020 election season identifies “white supremacist extremists” as the foremost threat to the democratic process this year.
The intelligence assessment, leaked exclusively to The Nation, was produced by the DHS’s Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) division.
In an interview, a former senior DHS I&A intelligence officer corroborated the whistleblower’s claims, and described the challenges he had faced to monitoring white supremacists under the Trump administration: “As soon as Trump came in, counterterrorism ended,” he said.
DC correspondent Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) reports:
“White Supremacists Are a Threat to Elections, Says DHS”
“While the Trump administration publicly downplays the rise of the far right, Homeland Security anticipates ‘physical threats’ to the 2020 election.”
This builds on previous reporting by Klippenstein that found President Trump keeps pointing to antifa to delegitimize the powerful and largely peaceful protests roiling American cities—when in fact, an internal FBI situation report reveals antifa’s presence is so negligible, his own FBI had trouble finding evidence of their involvement. And a separate leaked DHS intelligence report revealed intelligence officials are attempting to tie American activists it considers antifa to foreign powers, in a possible effort to circumvent constitutionally-guaranteed legal protections.
Ken Klippenstein is The Nation’s DC correspondent. His reporting focuses on the machinations of the American national security state and documents under-the-radar politics and policies enacted by the Trump administration. Klippenstein was previously senior investigative reporter for The Young Turks and a frequent contributor to The Daily Beast. His reporting has been referenced by countless outlets and cited by Congress—including, in one instance, to grill FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in American journalism.
