“Mr. Murphy adopted correct, lawful whistle-blower guidelines in reporting severe allegations of misconduct towards D.H.S. management, significantly involving political distortion of intelligence evaluation and retaliation,” Mark S. Zaid, Mr. Murphy’s lawyer, mentioned in an announcement.
Democrats on the Home Intelligence Committee requested Mr. Murphy to testify in personal on Sept. 21, a doable precursor to a public listening to within the weeks earlier than Election Day.
“We’ll resolve this, expose any and all misconduct or corruption to the American folks, and put a cease to the politicization of intelligence,” mentioned Consultant Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the committee. He mentioned the allegations of politically censored intelligence assessments had been significantly worrisome in gentle of the Trump administration’s determination final month to stop briefing lawmakers in person on election safety threats.
Sarah Matthews, a White Home spokeswoman, mentioned in an announcement that Mr. O’Brien had “by no means sought to dictate the intelligence group’s concentrate on threats to the integrity of our elections or on another matter.” She known as Mr. Murphy a “disgruntled former worker” whom Mr. O’Brien had by no means heard of. However, she added, the nationwide safety adviser “persistently and publicly advocated for a holistic concentrate on all threats to our elections — whether or not from Russia, Iran, China or another malign actor.”
Alexei Woltornist, the spokesman for the Homeland Safety Division, rejected Mr. Murphy’s allegations.
“We flatly deny that there’s any fact to the deserves of Mr. Murphy’s declare,” Mr. Woltornist mentioned. “D.H.S. seems to be ahead to the outcomes of any ensuing investigation, and we count on it’ll conclude that no retaliatory motion was taken towards Mr. Murphy.”
As president, Mr. Trump has clashed steadily with the intelligence group, significantly over the difficulty of election interference. At a information convention in 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump sided with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and mentioned he didn’t suppose Moscow was chargeable for the 2016 interference. A couple of months later, Mr. Trump dismissed the C.I.A.’s evaluation that the Saudi crown prince was chargeable for the homicide of Jamal Khashoggi, a distinguished Washington Submit columnist. In February 2019, after intelligence chiefs supplied Congress assessments on North Korea and Iran that had been at odds with the White Home, the president instructed them to “go back to school.”
