Whistleblower told by White House ‘to stop reporting on Russians’

A senior US intelligence official said the White House ordered him to stop reporting on Russian election interference.

US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien. Picture: AFP

A senior US intelligence official said the White House ordered him to stop reporting on Russian election interference and highlight Chinese and Iran meddling instead, according to a whistleblower complaint.

Brian Murphy, a top official in the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, said he was ordered in May by acting DHS chief Chad Wolf to stop providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference.

He said in his complaint that Mr Wolf had told him the order came from National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.

Mr Murphy says he was punitively demoted on August 1 after resisting two years of pressure to distort intelligence reports for political reasons. This, he said, included exaggerating the threat of terrorists entering the country from Mexico, playing down the threat of white nationalism and holding back reports on Russian interference.

He says was called to meet Mr Wolf on July 8. At the time, Mr Murphy alleges, “Mr Wolf stated to Mr Murphy the intelligence notification should be ‘held’ because it ‘made the President look bad’.”

AFP