This was a dramatic break with precedent that, like the parallel efforts of Wolf and Barr, followed a clear pattern of these senior officials in sensitive posts tamping down the flow of information so as to enhance Trump’s political prospects. Ratcliffe sparked a bipartisan firestorm on Capitol Hill in late August when he flatly announced he would no longer brief key congressional committees in person before the election about foreign threats. Evanina said that China’s opposition to Trump has been mostly rhetorical and based on its concerns he is “unpredictable.” Representative Adam Schiff, who leads the House Intelligence Committee, bluntly pronounced that Barr was “lying.”
After all, America’s top counterintelligence official, William Evanina, had told Congress in early August that Russia is using “a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden,” and is the most active foreign force in the pending election. Asked in a CNN interview to identify the chief foreign bad actor in the 2020 election cycle, Barr asserted without any persuasive evidence, “I believe it’s China,” adding only that he had “seen the intelligence.”īarr’s claim puzzled and outraged many observers. In early September, for example, a top DHS intelligence official filed a whistleblower complaint with the agency’s inspector general, alleging Wolf had told him to stop reporting that Russia was interfering again to boost Trump, lest it displease the president and make him “look bad.”Īlso in September, Barr appeared to be following the same administration-wide mandate to dismiss the Russia threat. The collective track record that Barr, Wolf, and Ratcliffe have compiled on these fronts looks much like the functioning of an actual deep state in authoritarian countries such as Russia and Turkey, say ex-intelligence officials.
Trump tapped all three since early 2019 to replace Cabinet-level officials who’d delivered politically unpalatable counsel to the president on threats ranging from Russia to China to domestic terrorism. What’s more, critics charge, Barr, Wolf, and Ratcliffe have largely been selected on the basis of their willingness to erect a Trump-branded deep state that limits information that could harm Trump and pushes Trump-friendly narratives at the highest levels of government. That instinct also animates a trio of top Cabinet-level officials in the legal, national security, and intelligence worlds who’ve echoed Trump’s deep state rhetoric while aiding the cause of transforming the federal government into his personal fiefdom. Attorney General William Barr, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe have all helped amplify Trump’s campaign to discredit intelligence about Russian meddling in 2016 to help him win, and the Kremlin’s backing of the president’s reelection effort, sparking congressional criticism and sowing public confusion. I think Trump has a feral instinct for power.” That’s what Putin has and Erdogan has, too. “Trump wants to have a government that’s his personal weapon. Still, Sipher goes on to note that this mobbed-up vision of top-down message discipline also shares clear affinities with prominent anti-democratic regimes. The collective track record that Barr, Wolf, and Ratcliffe have compiled on these fronts looks much like the functioning of an actual deep state in authoritarian countries such as Russia and Turkey. He’s trying to create his own deep state, and is trying to make people complicit in his dirty deeds-like a Mafia boss.” “He’s trying to make these institutions beholden to him. “He came into power thinking these institutions were his and would do his bidding,” Sipher added.
“Trump probably believed that the federal bureaucracy was the president’s personal tool to maintain political power.” “Trump came to office as the most ignorant and ahistorical president of all time,” John Sipher, who spent 28 years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Services, with a stint heading its Russia operations, told me. The result has downgraded the flow of information within the administration into a glorified sort of agitprop, former senior officials say-and this brings the Trump White House into clear alignment with elements of authoritarian regimes, where real deep states control information and bend laws. Armed with this blunt article of faith, Trump has broadly expanded his own power, while consolidating his administration’s control of officially sanctioned disinformation.
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