WEDNESDAY WAS a two-scandal day in Washington. The Washington Post published bits from “Rage”, a forthcoming book on President Donald Trump by Bob Woodward, a veteran Post reporter who has written several bestsellers about American politics including “Fear” in 2018, in which aides referred to Mr Trump as “unhinged,” an “idiot” and “a fucking liar”. For his latest work, Mr Woodward leans on audio tapes of Mr Trump cooing over Kim Jong Un, and admitting that he knew how serious covid-19 was (“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed...It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”) while publicly downplaying it. Mr Woodward also said that Mr Trump called his generals “a bunch of pussies”.

If that was the more straightforward of the two scandals, the second, an altogether murkier affair, threatens to be the more serious. It revolves around an allegation that Mr Trump’s political appointees are manipulating American intelligence for political reasons. On September 8th Brian Murphy, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis—which provides intelligence reports to and analyses information from law-enforcement agencies concerning security threats to America—filed a complaint. In it, he alleges that several senior DHS officials pressured him to alter his intelligence reports for political reasons. That has long been anathema in the intelligence community, whose members pride themselves on their apolitical professionalism and commitment to accuracy.

The most alarming such pressure concerned Mr Murphy’s work on Russian electoral interference. The complaint alleges that in May 2020 Chad Wolf, a former lobbyist who is now acting DHS secretary, told Mr Murphy to “cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran”. Mr Wolf said those directions came from Robert O’Brien, Mr Trump’s national security adviser. Mr Murphy refused to comply, because he believed doing so “would put the country in substantial and specific danger”. On another occasion, Mr Wolf told him to withhold his analysis “because it ‘made the president look bad’”.

Mr Murphy also levies several other charges. He alleges that Kirstjen Nielsen, a former DHS secretary, perjured herself before Congress, dramatically overstating the number of suspected terrorists coming across America’s south-western border. He claims that Ken Cuccinelli, the DHS’s second-in-command, demanded “the names of the ‘deep state’ individuals” whose analysis of Central America displeased him, so he could “fire or reassign them”. He also alleges that in May and June 2020, Mr Cuccinelli told him to alter parts of a report concerning threats from white-supremacist terrorists “in a manner that made the threat appear less severe, as well as include information on the prominence of violent ‘left-wing’ groups”. And he says that Messrs Wolf and Cuccinelli told him to “modify intelligence assessments to ensure they matched up with the public comments by President Trump on the subject of ANTIFA and ‘anarchist’ groups.” Mr Murphy alleges that he was demoted for raising his concerns.

Those concerns are serious. An intelligence service that alters its analysis to spare a president’s feelings and suit his immediate electoral concerns does not really produce intelligence; it produces propaganda. If white supremacists really are a markedly bigger threat than ANTIFA and “anarchist groups”, law enforcement agencies should adjust their resources accordingly. Some officials are sceptical of Mr O’Brien’s allegations regarding Chinese hacking and electoral interference. America’s allies may already be wondering whether any intelligence America shared with them was shaded or altered for domestic political concerns.

There are, though, reasons for scepticism. Mr Murphy’s story is catnip for Mr Trump’s opponents. Its allegations are so shocking and consistent with what many of them believe of the president’s inclinations—soft on Russia and white supremacists—that too many will read and believe it instantly, a textbook case of confirmation bias.

Mr Murphy was removed from his post on August 1st after his office had compiled and disseminated to law enforcement dossiers on journalists and activists (he denies having engaged “in surveillance of journalists’ private data”). Believing himself to have been pushed under the bus, he may be dragging a few people under the wheels with him. That does not mean he is lying. He may be both guilty of an abuse of power, in monitoring behaviour that is protected by the First Amendment, and also have been told to doctor intelligence. He may have both an axe to grind and ample justification to grind it. Or he may not.

The Woodward story is clear and substantiated, even if the timing and method of its release are designed to sell books. This one is much murkier. But they both charge that Mr Trump and his political appointees are willing to mislead the public over grave threats: the deadliness of a virus, the extent of Russian electoral interference, the threat posed by white-supremacist terrorists. The American people will soon have to decide whether they want to return to office a president who misleads them, and whose political appointees often value political expediency above accuracy.