The most sensible electoral security official in the US intelligence network.Hus He said Friday that China “prefers” a final result where President Donald Trump is not re-elected in November and Russia is seeking to “denigrate” former Vice President Joe Biden’s blank offer..
“We believe China prefers that President Trump, whom Beijing considers unpredictable, not win re-election,” William R said.Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Centre, in an update on the landscape of election threats by November.Elections..
“China has intensified its influence efforts by November 2020 in the U.S. political environment, put pressure on political figures it deviates and counteracts China’s criticism.”
“We believe that Russia is using a number of measures to basically denigrate former Vice President Biden and what he considers an ‘anti-Russian establishment’.The Obama administration’s policy on Ukraine and its aid to the anti-Putin opposition in Russia,” he added.Evanina added.
Evanina also said Iran seeks to “undermine U.S. democratic institutions, President Trump, and divide the country.”
Essentially, Evanina’s Friday afternoon placed two of America’s major wartime parties on opposite sides of the election: Russia for Trump and China for Biden.
The most sensible counterintelligence official is also the clearest that the intelligence network has reported that Russia prefers one candidate over another in the 2020 race.
At a news convention at his country club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Friday night, Trump gave the impression of being reluctant to settle for the findings of the intelligence community.
When asked if he believed in the information, the president replied, “It may just be, I mean, it might be a lot.”
“I think the last user Russia needs to see in effect is Donald Trump because no one has ever been harder with Russia, ever,” Trump said, adding later, “the last thing Russia needs, and China needs, and Iran needs,” is Donald Trump to win.”
When asked what he would do in response, Trump proposed a concrete action, saying, “Well, let’s take a closer look.”
He continued his unfounded attacks on mail-in voting, saying that this is the “greatest risk” to electoral security and that it is easy for a foreign force to falsify ballots.There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud related to mail voting.
Evanina’s use of the word “denigration” is also the term used through the intelligence network in his 2017 assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an “influence campaign” aimed at harming Hillary Clinton.The intelligence network also concluded that Russia’s “clear preference” for Trump and aspired to help him, an assessment Trump rejected.
Russia’s goals were to “denigrate” Clinton, according to the 2017 intelligence network report.
The prospect of interference in 2020 will further control U.S. defenses opposing foreign interference, which Trump has minimized by rejecting any suggestion that Kremlin influence played a role in his election.
CNN reported Friday that U.S. intelligence officials had presented data to lawmakers and presidential crusades that Russia was a disdain crusade for Biden.
Biden’s crusader advisors have already discussed Evanina’s assessment, according to a user close to the discussions.The team focused in particular on the semantics of the relationship with the former vice president, noting that Russia is unambiguously seeking to “denigrate” Biden while China simply “prefers “a Trump defeat.
Last month, Evanina was criticized by Democratic leaders for her latest warning against efforts by Russia, China and Iran to interfere in the November elections. influence the choice.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Friday that Evanina stepped forward by adding more details, but “still treats 3 actors with other intentions and functions as equivalent threats to our democratic elections.”
A workplace official at the Director of National Intelligence told CNN that “there is no specific rank or order through which risk actors are listed” in Evanina’s statement.
“Each of these adversaries poses a risk to our elections and it is imperative that we all paint in a country combined as a country to fight them,” the official told CNN on a Friday.
The official said the evidence is “the recent, accurate and objective maximum data on electoral threats that the intelligence network has to offer in an unclassified framework today.”
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said Friday that Evanina “specifies” that “Russia’s efforts to influence Russia remain a significant threat,” adding that it would be a “serious mistake to forget the developing threats posed through China and Iran.”
The director of the Agency for Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security (CISA), Christopher Krebs, praised Evanina’s transparency, but in particular spoke of Russia and not other countries through the name.
“We have long said that Russia and other countries are targeting our elections,” Krebs said on a Friday.”We knew it was true in 2016, we know it’s true today and we know they’ll keep checking to intervene..”
In a joint statement, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s most sensible Republican and Democrat, the senses. Marco Rubio and Mark Warner, thanked Evanina on Friday for providing more threat data and encouraged the intelligence network to “continue to make this data available..””
The two senators also called on “political leaders of all kinds to run from militarizing intelligence issues for political purposes, as this promotes the divisive goals of our adversaries.”
But on Friday, Biden and Trump’s campaigns responded to the news of Evanina’s caution by launching attacks on others.
Biden’s crusader foreign policy adviser Tony Blinken accused Trump of “inviting, encouraging, and even attempting to publicly and continually coerce foreign interference in the U.S. election.”
“Joe Biden, on the other hand, has led the fight opposed to foreign interference for years and refuses to settle for any foreign curtains intended to help him in this election, which Donald Trump and his crusade have failed to achieve,” Blinken said.I.
Trump’s director of communications, Tim Murtaugh, said the Trump administration held Moscow accountable and “tougher with Russia than any other administration in history,” and also attacked Obama’s former national security agent, Susan Rice, who is a possible vice president of Biden.
“In 2016 it was Democrats who actively sought the help of foreign citizens in an unsuccessful effort to defeat President Trump, and no one would be surprised if Democratic operatives ever did anything good again.If anyone faces questions about foreign interference in 2020, it’s Joe Biden’s campaign,” Murtaugh said.
On Friday, Evanina said: “Many foreign actors have a preference for the winner of the election, which they make explicit through a series of open and personal actions; Covert influence efforts are rarer.
Giving an example from Russia to “denigrate” Biden, Evanina accused Ukrainian pro-Russian lawmaker Andriy Derkach of “spreading accusations of corruption” to undermine Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party.
Evanina also said that some with ties to the Kremlin were going to bolster Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.
And China’s public rhetoric in recent months has been “increasingly critical” about the Trump administration’s reaction to coronavirus, the recent closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, and actions related to Hong Kong, among other issues, Evanina noted.
“Beijing recognizes that all these efforts can simply be the presidential race,” Evanina said.
Evanina’s assessment comes two days after the release of a new State Department report accusing Russia of running a complicated campaign of disinformation and propaganda, using approaches and adding Kremlin-aligned news sites to publicize its agenda. .
The report specifically focuses on the Russian government’s use of this network to publicize disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic as it spreads around the world. However, he did not mention Russian disinformation in the context of the 2020 US presidential election, as it falls outside the mandate of the Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which focuses on foreign propaganda and disinformation. addressed to a foreign audience.
This story has been updated with comments by Mitch McConnell.
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