right now i'm on to have a very. brutal pair. right here. in our 2 part series the 3rd reich the dark starts nov 12th on d w. t v. we have some states who've made sudden changes to their election systems at the last minute and that is never a good idea isn't the biggest threat to your democracy. by the president to commit to accepting the election result if he loses you know that's a stupid question really a deeply divided america is heading for its election with the polls showing many people afraid of bonhams after the vote my guest this week from washington is ken cuccinelli he's the acting number 2 at the department of homeland security which caused uproar after reports of its agents used excessive force during recent

protests in portland oregon can these departments keep the peace in this critical period. should really welcome to conflict zone 3 weeks to polling day in the u.s. can of americans have faith in their electoral system yeah absolutely this is the most well protected election we've ever had and at the federal level the federal government has different responsibilities than the states we focus on cyber protection and dealing with nation states and people attacking the whole system we've got better surveillance and we've ever had before on the system and unlike 4 years ago we have great communication with all 50 states and the district of columbia. about what we're seeing in the threats that exist now didn't happen 4

years ago so all of us care facilities we have all of our states participating in our surveillance effort unlike only about a 3rd of them 4 years ago so all the scare stories about massive vote by mail fraud are simply untrue is that right now let me be careful i said the federal government focuses on the cyber threats what you're describing the kind of mail in voter fraud those sorts of things that i'll call more traditional voter fraud are still possibilities and the states are responsible for policing that the federal government does not participate in that except to provide them intelligence that we discover on the subject as part of our work but that is a state responsibility and every single state system is different from every other states system so fraud takes place in one location at a time one stated

a time and obviously we do everything we can to support our state partners in policing that well the f.b.i. said the last month the agency has not seen evidence of any coordinated national fraud effort whether it's by mail or otherwise you see any reason to doubt what the f.b.i. has told you certainly not at a national level of course a month ago voting hadn't started voting has now started and you know we all see news stories about one thing happening here or there in different parts of the country and you know we're paid to be worried about that but so far nothing large scale that we have detected so what is it the president trump knows that you don't when he says repeatedly this is going to be the greatest election disaster in history the most corrupt election in the history of our country the greatest fraud in the history of elections where did all these predictions of a massively rigged election come from or did. just make them up i think he's

concerned about particularly states that automatically mail out ballots to every registered voter and they're concerned that those could be collected up and sent back in by people to whom they were not mailed to they were intended to go to and we have some states who have made sudden changes to their elections. at the last minute and that is never a good idea i don't care what party you or or or anything to be essentially trying out a new system including your security in a presidential election year the biggest turnout year of them all that's the concern but what you're telling me is very different from his predictions the most corrupt election in the history of our country this is what he's for costing very different from what i question yeah it's very different from what you're saying. well i'm a den of fining them just wondering if you're on the same pay and their and their entire and their entire states that are operating as i just described. your

threat assessment talks about the russians trying to sow distrust in america's democracy they go really need to do they because mr trump is not good for them how could the russians possibly so mistrust in the democratic process that he has by predicting the greatest election disaster in history well hillary clinton was you has used similar language in describing her well her advice to her follow on campaign or joe biden and in terms of after the election and so forth candidates operate differently than everybody else and they have a role to play in the process and people will judge. their votes based in part on the shorts of things the candidates say for russia to use your example they have no such role and they have no such right to participate unlike the candidates themselves so it's a very very different situation but the fact is that on the back of all this

incendiary rhetoric america is being self to the teeth in advance of this election isn't the f.b.i. says firearm sales has a monthly record of 3900000 in june how concerned are you about that people are buying guns people in your country who've never bought guns before in advance of this election yeah i think that's more tied to the civil unrest that has nothing to do with the election we've seen that spike since the civil unrest began in the spring in may and i will tell you that in my state of virginia where i used to be the attorney general i've heard from friends who used to be supporters of gun control and suppressing gun sales that they're buying those guns and they're changing their perspective so the civil unrest is really what's driving the desire for self protection particularly when you see the attacks on law enforcement in this country that have taken place on such a wide scale and the fact that in some places and all you. again my home state

richmond the capital city of virginia where the police have not necessarily responded to calls for help so people realize that to a certain extent they're on their own and they're preparing themselves for that mr pritchard really was also causing concern is a survey this month which found that around a 3rd of americans justify some degree of violence to advance political goals a 3rd you proud that 4 years of donald trump has led america to this i think your conclusion is foolish you know them use a simpler survey that just focused on college students where they believe something like a 5th of them and this was several years ago that the same conclusion using violence was ok to stop people saying what they considered to be inappropriate speech it was interesting that overwhelmingly those folks identified themselves as liberal

so this is a left wing phenomena in the united states and and it has grown regardless of donald trump this is been a more associated with in tif and the kind of violence that they perpetrate against people that they don't like. you now have the charm campaign calling for every able bodied man and woman to join the army for trump's election security campaign this from donald trump jr you really want to militarize the election right like this we've already seen the f.b.i. arresting a far right group from the so-called verein watchman who were planning to kidnap the governor of michigan shouldn't that be a wake up call about these militia groups. and their actions in advance of this election that actually was not a far right group or initial reports as usual were wrong but the fact of the matter is we don't want to see any sort of violence associated with the election we've had

months of civil unrest focused in cities where they frankly don't give the police the authority to establish peace where that does happen and we in our country we use the national guard are sometimes for that that peace has been restored and that's what we want to see in the president himself has been very emphatic about that all over the country regardless of regardless of politics you comfortable about these militia groups forming part of the army for term selection security operation last month militia group one militia group set up illegal roadblocks and identity checks in multan i'm a county oregon do you encourage this kind of lawlessness no you know that's a stupid question really of course not and again your connection between different parts i'm not quite sure why you want to attack the president so much instead of assign responsibility for these things to the people who are responsible for them but i just don't buy into the premise that underlies your question isn't perhaps

the biggest threat to your democracy the failure by the president to commit to accepting the election result if he loses his answer the question was we'll see what happens how does that strengthen people's confidence in the electoral system in the u.s. . much like hillary clinton advised joe biden don't concede no matter what so they're going to fight it out and they're going to have an election and you know we're going to go to the present and loving and and if you don't if you don't want me to answer questions i'm not quite sure why i'm sitting here and and that will play out and you know you like many others have sort of bid on that and the president has never never given any indication that the outcome of the election wouldn't be exactly what the voters determine what it was last time it's what it's been every time in the history the united states and that's what it will be this time and the key for us the key for this president is that americans decide that

election that we block out the interference of the outsiders and that americans votes are each counted and each counted once and properly and the result will be what it is under our system and we'll all move on with that on january 20th regardless of who's sworn in as the next president let's talk about the threats you have highlighted the acting secretary of your department chad wolf recently singled out violent white supremacist extremists as being a major concern he said they've been exceptionally lethal in their current targeted attacks in recent years how do you explain the fight in the 1st debate talking about violent groups the president said almost everything i see is from the left wing not from the right wing is he not seeing what's right when violence is being promised than perpetrated. are you not showing him those documents no no i mean but in the last 4 months in this country it's been just cities on fire and those are

overwhelmingly left the base call them protests but really the riots looting and violence that's the problem that's what he was talking about almost everything i see is from the left wing not from the right wing he refused to condemn a group. the proud boys which were described by the associated press as a male only group of neo fascists who call themselves western chauvinist in fact he told them to stand back and stand by are you happy that the u.s. president tells groups like this to stand by stand by for what so again you know you've characterized a group and i don't necessarily agree with your characterization the pictures i've seen of members of that are hispanic and black in addition to weight so you know he got to be a little bit more careful in discriminating in just smearing people like that. you know the president wants people to stay involved in staying engaged he recently in his capacity as president not as

a candidate gave federal employees the election day off to work as election officials to help bring off the election safely and securely so you know i don't hear you asking about that as a candidate he encourages his folks to participate as volunteers to turn out votes to do all the kinds of things you need to win an election and and he has 2 roles here unlike his opponent so he's playing them both vigorously and effectively so how much of a thread are these when they should groups who may well turn up to the teeth the polling stations to quote observe what's going on how worried are you that people could feel intimidated by that violence could break out you seem very complacent about so. we have no no no no you're hypothesizing with no information there is no intelligence today that

a single polling place of our approximately very approximately 100000 across this country. is subject to any such threat if we get that sort of intelligence the f.b.i. in its role as the protector of civil liberties against civil rights violations and threatening people voting would be a civil rights violation would take that information and act on it and they are prepared to do exactly that with respect to sort of pop up violence things that we don't see coming state and local law enforcement officials are as they have always been responsible for taking care of that we will offer them all the help that they can that were legally allowed but the federal government is actually blocked by federal law from getting near polling places on election day except on very rare with very rare exceptions scritching only department is currently under investigation by the house intelligence committee after allegations that do you an

acting secretary chad wolf illegally manipulated intelligence to both donald trump's interests department spokesman has denied these allegations although completely false yes they are they come from a high level was an evil act in fact the yes in fact the same person wrote an e-mail only days before maybe a week before he left his then position. actually explicitly stating the opposite so you know and in the house committee knows that they have that and but they have other interests here that are political so but so far every single allegation he made for which there is information has. been proven false and you never had meetings with him in which you told him to modify the section on white supremacy in your current threat assessment so as to make that threat appear via

a loop salute. and you never expressed frustration with it very seriously i knew it never expressed frustration with televisions reports on central america and you had accused unknown deep state intelligence analysts of compiling you never only how slow they were that. only how slow they went in your view does this administration play politics with the threats facing the us play them up or play them down for purely political reasons absolutely not it's been a media narrative that's been very popular and as someone who is at least a role in one part of it with the department homeland security in a year i have never seen that happen what about the president's warnings about the caravan of central american migrants heading towards the border in 2018 he tweeted that criminals are now no middle east there's

a mixed up with those people wasn't the slightest evidence for that was there no there was you know it's a matter of degree in terms of how many of the most recent caravan had the same but are our allies in guatemala 1st and then mexico broke up that caravan and enforce their own immigration laws in such a way that those folks will return home or turned away from continuing north. well tom paine self actually walked the whole thing back a few hours after he said it and said there's no proof of anything but that could very well be that's playing politics with intelligence. the well he's a candidate for president so you know we do have information about some of the people who come up in these caravans that varies time from one time to another us to about 28 there are a lot of caravans and 20 there haven't been a lot of caravans this year we've had one recently that i was referring to and we do have information about some of the people who gather in those and you know we

make use of that we share it with our allies along the way and we work together with them to try to avoid large scale illegal immigration and try to stick to legal immigration. you talked earlier about the violence in some cities and your use the president sent federal forces into portland oregon during some of these prolonged protests this summer. you were asked about this violence on a radio show on october the 1st then you said one of the worst parts of it is the encouraging courage moment it's been getting from so much of the left wing political leadership but in saying that you seem to ignore the fact that there have been some pretty blunt and frequent condemnations of violence from senior democrats why didn't you mention that as well. wow you you ask questions like you're the communications department for the democrat national committee here. i said so many

on the left and i'll give you examples as i did in that interview i believe the speaker of the house attacking law enforcement officers but not condemning those who are committing the violence mayor ted wheeler of portland oregon who went out to speak to the violent looters and they're not protesters they're rioters and and he thought they were his friends and they shouted him down and begin rushing his space's own police had to declare a riot and rush him out of there governor brown of oregon who in 4 months of violence has yet to use her own national guard she has over 7800 national guardsman whose part of their purpose is stablish in peace in their violent outbreaks in her state and she refuses to do it and instead condemns the ministry for protecting

a federal courthouse and federal buildings in portland oregon that's so just to be clear you mentioned adding officers in portland we were doing that to protect federal facilities we don't just go into a city even when they're violent. the agreement or cooperation of that city unless we have a federal mission to perform so again the 1st responsibility to pick lee in quelling violence and dealing with it is state or local government but where there are federal facilities and where federal jurisdiction is attacked we have to respond to that ourselves and many of those who criticize the actions of your federal officers cited the use of excessive force the american civil liberties union said in august that your militarized agents use sharp shooters to maim people protesters away and i'm up cause routinely attack journalists legal observers and medics with sonic weapons and tear gas they didn't spare moms dads veterans nurses

or even the city's mayor there was this law enforcement or punishment so 1st of all the characters ations you recited are false in portland alone our officers incurred over 300 injuries meaning we had they were injured not causing injuries. they were very restrained while dealing with violent protests night after night for weeks on end. with often without the help assistance or support of local law enforcement because the local political officials those same ones i mentioned earlier as encouraging this sort of behavior ordered them to hold back so we used as minimal amount of force as we could to maintain safety and to attempt to quell violence as much as possible you didn't beat a navy veteran for simply asking questions doctors were wont to be

a as they gave medical support to the injured no no one that one didn't happen thankfully but with respect to the navy veteran you're referring to that was the united states marshal service in the department of justice that was not. members of the department of homeland security so i can't really speak to the tails of that i can say that when a law enforcement officer is doing their job. they don't have the luxury of inquiring various job or life status questions like you just described to determine if someone is a veteran or a mother or a father or all the various things you named they don't have that luxury when they're under attack and trying to protect themselves. so are you satisfied with all the actions that your officers carried out then despite the fact that the a.c.l.u. said d h s is too powerful to abusive and too much of a threat to america's democratic values the american civil liberties union has

proven itself an extremely unreliable and nonobjective characterize or of events so you know your reliance on them says more about where you are coming from than what the facts were we were very happy with how our officers performed they were professionally restrained over months of violence directed at them and the facilities that they were protecting including the people in those facilities and behaved very well as no one is ever perfect we don't expect perfection but they did an outstanding job and part of that unfortunately is shown by the raw number of injuries they suffered over the course of that time while inflicting very few was that was the threat exaggerated president trump said of portland the entire city is a blaze all the time that was aug 31st but it wasn't was it the fire service city's

fire rescue service told him that no uncertain terms were not a blaze in portland they said there's a very isolated pocket of demonstrations that have involved fire none of which has been substantial enough to need more than one fire engines so that the facts get in the way of your narrative no if you just look at the federal courthouse when they on numerous occasions attacked the courthouse broke front doors you know we're tearing wood off and we're throwing liquid excel or end into the courthouse and attempting to fire commercial fireworks in to set it on fire so they're trying to burn down the building and kill everyone in it so you know you you respond accordingly to that and even with that kind of a through. yet we never used above nonlethal means to repel those sorts of attacks so that seems very appropriate under the circumstances had the federal officials not been there that courthouse would have been burned to the ground so the city's

foreign rescue service didn't know what they were talking about while they've still got a federal courthouse and they don't have to drive to another state to have their cases heard because federal law enforcement officers were willing to commit and protected their been fires all over the city in various days in various places it isn't just the federal courthouse it's also police facilities for the police union facility other local buildings neighborhoods that they've gone through so you know. portland is not a big city that's an awful lot of violence over an awful long time and that includes but isn't limited to the setting of fires and you know again all over the city so i think it's accurate to say there have been fires all over the city that's true ken cuccinelli thanks for being on conflicts of. my pleasure.

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this is news coming to you live from berlin germany raises the alarm as the country records its highest number of cases since the start of the pandemic the news comes just hours after the machall and regional leaders greet new restrictions to contain the spread of the virus infected says she's concerned that measures may not be sufficient also coming up thailand's government bans protests as pro-democracy demonstrations escalates in the capital bangkok police have arrested at least 20 people including 3 protest leader.