Election interferenceOfficial: U.S. Adversaries Taking Sides, Wielding Influence Ahead of Election

By Jeff Seldin

Published 8 August 2020

Russia, China and Iran are all actively meddling in U.S. presidential politics hoping to persuade American voters to put their preferred candidate in the White House, according to an extraordinary warning from Washington’s top counterintelligence official. As was the case in 2016, Russia is actively working to help Trump. Russia has also recruited Ukrainian “actors” to manufacture dirt on Joe Biden and his son, to be fed into the investigation of the Bidens by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin). China and Iran would prefer to see Biden in the White House, but their interference efforts are not at the level of Russia’s broad campaign to help Trump. Trump rejected that part of the intelligence community’s assessment which details Russia’s broad effort on his behalf. “The last person Russia wants to see in office is Donald Trump,” he said. “I don’t care what anybody says.”

Russia, China and Iran are all actively meddling in U.S. presidential politics hoping to persuade American voters to put their preferred candidate in the White House, according to an extraordinary warning from Washington’s top counterintelligence official.

National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina said U.S. intelligence indicates that all three countries are hoping to sow further divisions in the United States and “undermine the American people’s confidence in our democratic process.”

But he said Russia, China and Iran are divided over whom they would like to see win the presidential contest in November: President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden.

“We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment,’” Evanina said in Friday’s statement. He described Moscow’s approach as consistent with the Kremlin’s criticism of Biden and former U.S. President Barack Obama.

“Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television,” Evanina said, adding China and Iran appear to be seeking to help Biden. 

Speaking hours later, the president disputed key parts of the intelligence community’s assessment.

“The last person Russia wants to see in office is Donald Trump because nobody’s been tougher on Russia than I have, ever,” the president told reporters at a hastily called and wide-ranging news conference at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “I don’t care what anybody says.”

Trump also appeared to contradict the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) assessment about whether Russia, China, Iran or other countries might be able to change the vote.

According to the statement by the NCSC’s Evanina, while those countries will likely seek to compromise the vote count, “it would be difficult for our adversaries to interfere with or manipulate voting results at scale.”

Trump, though, called that threat “a big problem.”

The biggest risk that we have is mail-in ballots” he said. “Whether it’s Russia or China, Iran, North Korea, many others … it’s much easier for them to forge ballots and send them in. It’s much easier for them to cheat.”

This is not the first time Trump has clashed with U.S. intelligence agencies over their assessments, particularly when it comes Russia.

He has long disputed the intelligence community’s 2017 finding that Russia, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin, “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible” during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, calling it a “hoax.”

Trump also lashed out at his intelligence chiefs on Twitter last year, calling them “extremely passive and naïve” and saying they, “should go back to school.”