During recent protests in Portland Oregon can these departments keep the peace in this critical period. Welcome to conflict zone 3 weeks to polling day in the u. S. Can americans have faith in their electoral system yeah absolutely this is the most well protected election weve ever had and 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 weve got better surveillance and weve 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 were seeing in the threats that exist that didnt 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 youre describing the kind of mail in voter fraud those sorts of things that ill 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 its 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 hadnt 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 were 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 dont 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 would. Did he just make them up i think hes concerned about particularly states that automatically mail out ballots to every registered voter and theyre 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 systems at the last minute and that is never a good idea i dont care what party you or or or anything to be essentially trying out a new system including your security in a president ial Election Year the biggest turnout year of them all thats the concern but what youre telling me is very different from his predictions the most corrupt election in the history of our country this is what hes for constant very different from what i question yeah its very different from what youre saying. Well im a den of fining them just wondering if youre also paying 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 americas democracy they dont really need to do that because mr trump has done it 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 short 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 its a very very different situation but the fact is that on the back of all this incendiary rhetoric america is being itself to the teeth in advance of this election isnt the f. B. I. Says firearm sales had a monthly record of 3900000 in june how concerned are you about that people are buying guns people in your country whove never bought guns before in advance of this election yeah i think thats more tied to the civil unrest it has nothing to do with the election weve 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 ive heard from friends who used to be supporters of gun control and suppressing gun sales that theyre buying those guns and theyre changing their perspective so the civil unrest is really whats 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 theyre on their own and theyre preparing themselves for that mr pritchard early words also causing concern is a survey this month which found that around a 3rd of americans justifies 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 teeth and the kind of violence that they perpetrate against people that they dont like you now have the Charm Campaign calling for every able bodied man and woman to join the army for trumps Election Security campaign this from Donald Trump Jr you really want to militarize the election right like this weve already seen the f. B. I. Arresting a far right group from the socalled war verein watchman who were planning to kidnap the governor of michigan shouldnt 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 initial reports as usual were wrong but the fact of the matter is we dont want to see any sort of Violence Associated with the election weve had months of civil. Unrest focused in cities where they frankly dont give the police the authority to establish peace where that does happen we in our country we use the National Guard sometimes for that that peace has been restored and thats 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 most gnome accounting are again do you encourage this kind of lawlessness no you know thats a stupid question really of course not and again your connection between different parts im 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 dont buy into the premise that underlies your question isnt perhaps the biggest threat to democracy the failure by the president to commit to accepting the election result they feel loses his own sense of the question was will see what happens how does that strengthen peoples confidence in the electoral system in the u. S. Much like Hillary Clinton advised joe biden dont concede no matter what so theyre going to fight it out and theyre going to have an election and you know the way clinton going to present the following and and if you dont if you dont want me to answer questions im not quite sure why im sitting here and and that will play out and you know if 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 wouldnt be exactly what the voters determine what it was last time its what its been every time in the history the United States and thats 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 or. Of of outsiders and americans votes are counted and each counted once and properly and the result will be what it is under our system and well all move on with that on january 20th regardless of whos sworn in as the next president lets 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 theyd been exceptionally lethal in their apartment targeted attacks in recent years how do you explain that either 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 right wing violence is being promised than perpetrated around are you not showing in those documents no no i mean but in the last 4 months in this country its been just cities on fire and those are overwhelmingly left the base call them protests but really the riots looting and violence thats the problem thats 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 called 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 youve characterized a group and i dont necessarily agree with your characterization the pictures ive seen of members of that are hispanic and black in addition to weight so you know you 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 she 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 dont 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 hes playing them both vigorously and effectively so how much of a threat of these Militia Groups who may well turn up to the teeth the polling stations to quote observe whats 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 a no no no no youre 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 dont 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 were with very rare exceptions misprision only you know department is currently under investigation by the House Intelligence Committee off the allegations that you and acting secretary chad wolf illegally manipulated intelligence to both Donald Trumps 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 email only days before maybe a week before he left his then position. Actually explicitly stating the opposite so you know and 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 assessments so as to make that threat appear out of the year salute 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 know 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 its been a media narrative thats been very popular in 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 dire warnings about the caravan of Central American migrants heading towards the border in 2018 he tweeted that criminals are now no middle easterners a mixed up with those people wasnt the slightest evidence for that was there oh no there was you know its 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 were returned home or turned away from continuing north. Well tom himself actually walked the whole thing back a few hours after he said it and said theres no proof of anything but that could very well be thats playing politics with intelligence is the well hes 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 havent been a lot of caravans this year weve 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 and you said one of the worst parts of it is the in courage of courage moment its 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 avaaz from senior democrats why didnt you mention that as well. Well how you you ask questions like youre the Communications Department for the Democrat National committee here. I said so many on the left and ill 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 theyre not protesters theyre rioters and and he thought they were his friends and they shouted him down and began rushing his spaces 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 ing peace in when there are violent outbreaks in her state and she refuses to do it and instead condemns the administration for protecting a federal courthouse and federal buildings in Portland Oregon thats so just to be clear you mentioned adding officers in portland we w