Obama’s DHS Intelligence Experts Group
United States Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced the creation of a Homeland Intelligence Experts Group on September 19. This group is made up of “former senior intelligence officials, journalists and prominent human rights and civil liberties advocates,” most of whom have connections to former President Barack Obama and a far-left anti-Trump ideology.
The purpose of the new group is to provide the Department of Homeland Security advice and expertise on national security issues, such as “foreign nation-state adversaries, domestic violent extremists, cybercriminals, drug-trafficking cartels and other transnational criminal organizations.”
The Experts Group will be an invaluable asset as we navigate through this evolving threat and operating environment and continue to strengthen our efforts to protect the homeland.
– Kenneth Wainstein, under secretary for Intelligence and Analysis
Fifteen of the Experts Group’s 17 members have links to Obama or the left.
- John Brennan, Obama’s former chief counterterrorism advisor
- James Clapper, Obama’s former director of National Intelligence
- Tashina Gauhar, retrieved transcripts of Gen. Michael Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and worked closely with Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Robert Mueller, Lisa Page and Sally Yates
- Paul Kolbe, along with Clapper and Brennan signed a public letter in 2020 that called the report about Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation”
- Thomas Galati, while assistant police chief of the New York Police Department, led a six-year investigation into Muslim terrorism that resulted in zero leads but was defended by John Brennan
- John Bellinger, helped draft an open letter in August 2016 that stated Donald Trump would put the nation’s security “at risk” if he were elected president
- Benjamin Wittes, criticized the Trump administration’s executive order on visas and refugees, calling it “horrifying,” “malevolence” and “incompetence”
- Karen Greenberg, outspoken critic of expanded state power, particularly the Trump administration’s counterterrorism efforts, and a believer in the legitimacy of the 2020 election
- Rajesh De, managed Obama’s documents and their circulation between his senior staff while serving as White House staff secretary from 2011 to 2012
- Michael Leiter, praised as Obama’s “trusted adviser” after he retired as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center in 2009
- Caryn Wagner, nominated as under secretary for Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis by Obama in 2009
- Francis Taylor, nominated as under secretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis by Obama in 2014
- David Kris, nominated as assistant attorney general for National Security by Obama in 2009
- Elisa Massimino, influential human rights advocate who urged Obama to sign two executive orders demanding the closure of Guantanamo Bay and banning of torture
- Emily Harding, led the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election; unlike Mueller’s report, Harding concluded there was no Russian meddling
Two members of the group do not appear to have any links to Obama:
- Asha M. George
- Gregory Nojeim
Bureaucratic monsters: In his book America Under Attack, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry says America’s intelligence services “have become weapons for Barack Obama.”
During his presidency, Obama created an extensive surveillance database from the nation’s security agencies and private tech companies. Then he put faithful associates in control. We can still see the effects of Obama’s influence in some of these agencies.
Obama effectively created a new bureaucratic monster out of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—a “fourth branch of government” full of unelected deep state bureaucrats who are loyal to him, his ideology and his goals.
— Gerald Flurry, America Under Attack
