Those seven countries included in popular vote loser Donald Trump's Muslim ban (rejected by numerous federal courts) do not pose a security threat to the United States, contra Trump's rationale for the ban. That's according to a draft report from the Department of Homeland Security.
A draft document obtained by The Associated Press concludes that citizenship is an "unlikely indicator" of terrorism threats to the United States and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria's civil war started in 2011.
Trump cited terrorism concerns as the primary reason he signed the sweeping temporary travel ban in late January, which also halted the U.S. refugee program. A federal judge in Washington state blocked the government from carrying out the order earlier this month. Trump said Friday a new edict would be announced soon. The administration has been working on a new version that could withstand legal challenges.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Gillian Christensen on Friday did not dispute the report's authenticity, but said it was not a final comprehensive review of the government's intelligence. […]
The three-page report challenges Trump's core claims. It said that of 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack in the United States, just over half were U.S. citizens born in the United States. The others were from 26 countries, led by Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Of these, only Somalia and Iraq were among the seven nations included in the ban.
This is a preliminary draft from "a single" intelligence source that doesn't include "data from other intelligence community sources," Christensen said. Actually, though, it’s not just one source. It's drawn from "Justice Department press releases on terrorism-related convictions and attackers killed in the act, State Department visa statistics, the 2016 Worldwide Threat Assessment from the U.S. intelligence community and the State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2015." So that counts as several sources as far as most people are concerned.
The draft was compiled by civil service staff in DHS, not Trump appointees. We already know that the Trump team is on the case, trying cook the books. They’ll undoubtedly manufacture some attacks, like Bowling Green or all that stuff happening in Sweden.
