Mulvaney urged Nielsen

New York Times: Mulvaney urged Nielsen to not bring up future Russian election meddling to Trump

By Devan Cole

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was urged by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney not to bring up the subject of possible Russian interference in the 2020 election to President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Citing interviews with three unnamed senior administration officials and one former senior official, the Times said Nielsen, who left the White House earlier this month, was told by Mulvaney in a meeting this year that Trump "still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory."

Mulvaney, one official told the paper, said in the meeting the subject of Russian interference in the upcoming election "wasn't a great subject and should be kept below (Trump's) level."

The report -- coming a day after White House senior adviser Jared Kushner downplayed Russian meddling efforts -- raises fresh questions about the readiness of US defenses against foreign interference in the next presidential election.

Last week, special counsel Robert Mueller said in a redacted version of his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that a Russian troll group engaged in a years-long campaign to sow discord in the US -- and eventually to support Trump's election -- by creating and maintaining fake social media personas and activist organizations designed to look like they were run by real Americans.

According to the Times, during her tenure, Nielsen organized two meetings with Cabinet secretaries and agency heads, including top Justice Department and intelligence officials, to address the issue of interference.

The paper said she eventually abandoned efforts to design a strategy with other Cabinet secretaries to "to protect next year's election," and that the result was that the issue of Russian interference "did not gain the urgency or widespread attention that a president can command."

Many of the officials engaged in the issue "later periodically issued public warnings about indicators that Russia was both looking for new ways to interfere and experimenting with techniques in Ukraine and Europe," according to the Times. One official told the paper that DHS officials were "adamant that the United States government needed to significantly step up its efforts to urge the American public and companies to block foreign influence campaigns," but that the White House's "refusal" to discuss the issue complicated those warnings.

The Times said one senior administration official said Nielsen "began pushing after the November midterms for the government-wide efforts to protect the 2020 elections," but that Trump's main national security aides "resisted making it a focus" of discussions because at the time the elections were two years away.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, called the Times' report "concerning" during an interview Wednesday with CNN's John Berman on "New Day." Khanna also said he "absolutely" wants Nielsen to testify before Congress on the issue.

Later in the same program, Republican Sen. Mike Lee told CNN's Alisyn Camerota that Mulvaney's ask "doesn't make a lot of sense," but suggested that the official's statements may have been misunderstood.

"It may well be that what he was saying was, 'Let's find the right time and place and manner in which to bring that up,' and I suspect that that's the case," said Lee, who represents Utah. "If it is the case, that's not terribly troubling."