Concerns surrounding 2020 election ‘merit serious investigation’: former NSC official

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As the results of the current presidential election drag out there are enough anomalies found in it "to merit a serious investigation," according to Rich Higgins, former director for strategic planning at the National Security Council (NSC).

(Article by Ella Kietlinska and Joshua Philipp republished from TheEpochTimes.com)

Among concerns surrounding the election are "Twitter anomalies, the votes showing up in the middle of the night, the counts that go on forever," Higgins said in a recent interview on The Epoch Times' Crossroads program.

"There's a lot of evidence there that requires further investigation" and there are constitutional measures in place to do it, Higgins said, state legislators can act if any violations or irregularities are found in the voting process but they will need evidence to do so.

Higgins would like to see the Trump administration provide "a more succinct and coherent messaging" about the election situation.

Specifically, Higgins would like the administration to tackle "the disinformation campaign that we've seen now going on for a year and a half from the media as it pertains to the election."

"Of all the things that I'm most shocked about that I've seen in the past couple of days is the incessant media tipping of the scale through … the provision of narrative on one hand, and then the selective distribution of information on the other hand. … They're not only lying to you, they're also withholding information from you. It really is disgusting," Higgins said.

Higgins Warned Against Deep State

Higgins was fired from the NSC in 2017 for issuing a memo (text published by Foreign Policy) that warned about a political warfare operation launched by entrenched bureaucrats in the U.S. intelligence community.

"The Trump administration is suffering under withering information campaigns designed to first undermine, then delegitimize and ultimately remove the President," Higgins wrote in his memo intended for internal use only. His hope was that the memo "will help the president and understand what's happened to him in a more full context."

Higgins warned in his memo that these campaigns are not "normal D.C. partisan infighting and adversarial media relations … but rather political warfare at an unprecedented level that is openly engaged in the direct targeting of a seated president through manipulation of the news cycle."

Higgins explained in the interview with The Epoch Times that by "political warfare" he meant the Maoist sense of the term.

Political warfare is a component of a Maoist insurgency concept. "Maoist methodologies employ synchronized violent and non-violent actions that focus on mobilization of individuals and groups to action. This approach envisions the direct use of non-violent operational arts and tactics as elements of combat power," Higgins wrote in the memo.

The U.S. domestic political situation is completely informed by the Chinese strategic situation, Higgins said, adding that China's strategy behind its One Belt, One Road initiative "is nothing less than the unification of the Eurasian landmass under an economic Empire controlled by China." China has a lot of allies inside the United States, Wall Street, and in American corporations.

This political warfare led to the growth of the Left inside the United States that infiltrated even the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Justice, institutions that "in the past would have been citadels of the West, citadels of Western civilization," and nobody would expect having communist sympathizers inside them, Higgins said.

Higgins calls unelected bureaucracy that serves itself and is not beholden to the American people the deep state. However, he does not attribute such behavior to everybody inside the bureaucracy. There are thousands and thousands of patriots in the bureaucracy who are as frustrated as the American public with the leftist opposition and their politically correct thinking and decisions, Higgins said.

Transition of Power to Donald Trump

[caption id="attachment_475456" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses supporters at the James A. Rhodes Arena on August 22, 2016 in Akron, Ohio. Trump currently trails Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Ohio, a state which is critical to his election bid. (Photo by Angelo Merendino/Getty Images)[/caption]

Higgins spent 20 years working in the bureaucracy but the transition of power after 2016 election was different, he said. The narrative about Trump campaign collusion with Russia was growing and was being pushed on and Republicans who were active in the Never Trump movement were finding their way into the administration, Higgins said.

It became clear to Higgins that an operation was being run and "the intelligence community had a direct role in it."

"The scale of it was so large … it wasn't two or three rogue agents. … These were agency-wide, interagency-wide efforts that have been undertaken," Higgins said.

"I'm not even convinced today, after a year, year and a half of investigation by [Connecticut U.S. Attorney John] Durham that they fully comprehend everything that took place under it because it was so, you know, so large," Higgins added.

During his 20 year tenure, Higgins first became concerned during the Bush administration, "I saw an attempt to suspend reality, and to push narratives down into the decision-making cycle to the point where they were impacting operations on the ground—frankly, getting people killed," he said.

"That problem only became 10 times worse under the Obama administration, where to even raise your hand in question [to] a point of view was to find yourself on the out, pursued, investigated, throttled," Higgins added.

Higgins has written the book titled, "The Memo: Twenty Years Inside the Deep State Fighting for America First" published in September.

Higgins wrote the book with an intention to show that he is not a conspiracy theorist, and how somebody inside the system with unique experience who "had some really unique vantage points over the past 20 years, could come to be […] a red-pilled MAGA [Make America Great Again] patriot."