They and their associates contacted “established figures in the US media” and even “helped produce a documentary that aired on a US television network in late January 2020,” the clandestine community found.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “had competence over” Derkach’s activities, which the United States has sanctioned as an agent for Russia. Giuliani met with Derkach in Ukraine in 2019 and 2020, while seeking to publicly disclose material he believed would undermine Biden’s candidacy.
The Russians also tried to hack Democratic-aligned organizations after half the 2018 term and “unsuccessfully attacked US political actors in 2019 and 2020” and carried out a phishing campaign against Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, that the former -president urged Kiev to investigate the ties between him and Biden’s son Hunter.
Even so, all the Russian invasion of state and local governments that attracted attention before the election was probably not intended to alter the end result.
In fact, the effort fell short of the Kremlin-backed efforts to help Trump in his 2016 dispute against Hillary Clinton, the spy community wrote in its non-confidential assessment of foreign threats to the U.S. 2020 federal elections. And the agencies found no attempt by foreign countries to alter the vote counts or the final results.
“We believe that Russian President Putin has authorized, and a number of Russian governmental organizations have conducted, influence operations designed to denigrate the candidacy of President Biden and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbating the socio-political divisions in the USA, ”said the assessment.
“The main effort,” added the document, “revolved around a narrative – which Russian actors began to spread as early as 2014 – alleging corrupt ties between President Biden, his family and other American officials and Ukraine.” The report said Russia’s intelligence services “depended on proxies linked to Ukraine and on networks of those proxies – including their contacts in the United States – to spread this narrative.”
Unlike in 2016, however, “we have not seen persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to electoral infrastructure,” added the document, issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Iran, meanwhile, undertook a “secret influence campaign designed to undermine” Trump’s reelection candidacy, without directly promoting his rivals, in order to “undermine public confidence in the electoral process” and “sow division and exacerbate tensions in the country.
“We believe that supreme leader Khamenei has authorized the campaign and Iran’s military and intelligence services have implemented it using open and secret messages and cyber operations,” says the review.
The agencies assess with “high confidence” that China made no effort to interfere in the election, although an intelligence official maintained in a minority opinion that Beijing “has taken at least some measures to undermine” Trump’s chances “, mainly through the social media and official public statements and media. “
the evidence largely support previous statements by officials from the Trump era intelligence community who completed this Moscow and others were trying to interfere in the US elections.
Capitol Democrats and the former government last year regularly contested electoral security. Democrats initially argued that the government mistakenly placed China on a par with the threat posed by Iran and Russia, a conclusion that seems to have corroborated in the new report.
The two sides went back and forth for months before reaching an uncomfortable truce, although lawmakers were concerned about the final exam – initially ordered by a 2018 executive order that required the intelligence community to produce such a report, a requirement that the Congress enshrined this requirement in law in 2019 – it would be biased, especially if it was published before Trump stepped down.
Other important tips: The review found “no indication that any foreign actor has attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process” in last year’s elections, including voter registration, tabulation of votes or reported results.
ONE joint report issued by the Justice and Homeland Security departments likewise, he found “no evidence that any actor affiliated with a foreign government” has meddled in the voting process.
Together, the findings reject some of the most notorious baseless claims made by Trump and his allies, including that hackers aligned with foreign governments had manipulated electronic ballot boxes to place Biden in the Oval Office.
Other foreign nations, Lebanese Hezbollah, Cuba and Venezuela have taken steps to try to influence the election, according to the report, although “they have been smaller in scale than the influence efforts conducted by other actors in this electoral cycle. Cybercriminals have interrupted some preparations for the elections; we believe that your activities were probably motivated by financial motivations. “
What comes next: Leading Democratic lawmakers welcomed the release of the unclassified report and called for electoral security to become a post-Trump bipartisan issue.
Senate Intelligence President Mark Warner (D-Va.) Said the spy community has improved in detecting and defending against electoral interference.
“But the problem of foreign actors trying to influence the American electorate is not going away and, given the current party divisions in this country, they can find fertile ground to grow in the future,” he added.
President of the Intelligence Chamber, Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) Also said that “both parties must speak with one voice and repudiate any interference in our elections. We must protect ourselves and try to prevent all attempts at foreign interference and ensure that American voters decide the American elections ”.
The intelligence community’s report made it clear that the Kremlin would maintain its influence operations.
“Moscow almost certainly sees meddling in the US elections as an equitable response to the actions perceived by Washington and an opportunity to undermine the US’s global position and influence US decision-making,” the assessment said.