« Trump has demonstrated his propensity to weaponize DHS in furtherance of his political ends, which concerns me if the election results do not produce a clear winner, » one senior law enforcement
A congressional watchdog report finding President Donald Trump’s appointment of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership was illegal has ignited fears among insiders concerned about how the administration could have been repurposing DHS to act on behalf of its own political purposes ahead of a divisive national election. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a non-binding decision Friday finding Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and his deputy Ken Cuccinelli « were named by reference to an invalid order of succession » in the wake of former head Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation last year. She was succeeded by then-Customs and Border Protection chief Kevin McAleenan rather than the head of cybersecurity as is protocol, so when Aleenan himself left months later, Wolf assumed the role in what the GAO deemed an « improper » move. Rather than a simple breach of protocol, however, current and former federal officials saw an orchestrated attempt on the part of the administration to commandeer DHS by installing hardline loyalists willing to allow the department’s broad, post-9/11 mandate to be reinterpreted. By doing so, the administration could channel the powers of its many, traditionally autonomous agencies to pursue political goals in exchange for more federal resources, they said. « What is being done to DHS now is completely politicizing and giving them a mandate that was never thought of when it was created, » a senior law enforcement official told Newsweek on the condition of anonymity.
