A partisan clash over intelligence on foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election is getting nasty as Republican senators fend off accusations, fueled by leaks from Democrats, that they are facilitating a Russian disinformation operation.
The intelligence community has issued warnings about Russia, China, and Iran all seeking to meddle in the 2020 election in briefings that have been criticized by Democrats, who say they are not fulsome enough, and prompted Republicans to argue that the country is far better positioned to combat meddling than it was in 2016.
A deepening sense of unease and concerns of another presidential contest tainted by foreign actors with less than 100 days until Election Day was highlighted by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, who are conducting inquiries ranging from the Trump-Russia investigation to former President Barack Obama’s Ukraine policy. They sent a letter this week to Democratic congressional leaders blaming them and their caucus for distorting the public’s view of their investigative efforts as one steeped in malign foreign influence.
“Your misplaced motives aside, the substance of your letter and addendum also grossly mischaracterizes our investigation in an effort to shoehorn it into the false ‘Russian disinformation’ narrative you have promoted for years,” the Republicans wrote. “Although it is undisputed that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, as they have done in the past and will continue to do in the future, you have twisted this fact beyond recognition to forge a weapon for the purpose of attacking your political opponents no matter its tenuous relationship with facts or the truth.”
In July, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff wrote a letter with classified appendices to FBI Director Christoper Wray to say they were “gravely concerned, in particular, that Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation.”
In response to the letter, which was announced via a press release, former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell tweeted, “Gang of Eight (and others impacted) were already briefed. Weeks ago. This request is a CYA.”
The New York Times published a report that same day, July 20, which said, “behind the congressional Democrats’ warning are the efforts of a Ukrainian lawmaker, Andriy Derkach” who went to a KGB-linked school and was formerly connected to a pro-Russian faction in Ukraine, and who, in May, leaked portions of phone calls between former Vice President Joe Biden, who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
The leaked calls include discussions throughout 2015 and 2016. A Washington Examiner review found no mention of Burisma Holdings or Hunter Biden. Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, has been scrutinized by Republicans for hiring Biden’s son, Hunter, for a lucrative role on the board while the former vice president led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
Politico reported this week that “Democrats argue the investigation is based on Russian disinformation aimed at tipping the outcome of the election toward President Donald Trump.” Grassley and Johnson deny such motives and claim they never received anything from Derkach.
“The only relevant disinformation we are aware of are documents that you referenced in your letter and that your colleagues have introduced into our investigation,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “Your letter references a document, created by a Ukrainian national, that mentions our name along with other Republican senators and administration officials to suggest falsely that we might have received information from this individual. Liberal media outlets have picked up that reference, clearly from a leak, even though we have not received any information from that person, including tapes, and we both have publicly and privately stated as much. Thus it is you, not us, who have participated in the spread of disinformation.”
Johnson’s committee voted along party lines in May to approve a subpoena for Blue Star Strategies, a Washington, D.C., firm that represented Burisma. The Ukrainian energy company became a hot-button issue last year when President Trump seemed to reference it in a July 25 call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. In the call, immediately after Zelensky expressed interest in purchasing anti-tank weaponry, known as Javelins, from the United States, Trump asked Zelensky “to do us a favor though” by looking into a CrowdStrike conspiracy theory and possible Ukrainian election interference in 2016. Trump urged Zelensky later in the call to investigate “the other thing,” referring to allegations of corruption related to the Bidens.
The Democratic-led House impeached Trump in December, but he was acquitted after a trial in the Republican-led Senate in February.
Trump and his allies claim Biden improperly used his position as vice president to pressure Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to protect his son from an investigation into Burisma. Democrats say the focus on Burisma is part of an effort to dirty up Trump’s main rival in the 2020 contest. The former vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not fire Shokin, who was criticized by many in the West for not doing enough to crack down on corruption. Biden says there is “no credibility” to the claims of corruption, but his critics have seized on a video of a statement the former vice president made in January 2018 in which he boasted to a Council of Foreign Relations panel that he ordered Ukraine to fire Shokin or the White House would renege on a commitment to provide aid.
Andrii Telizhenko is a former diplomat at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington who had worked with Blue Star Strategies and was with Rudy Giuliani during the Trump lawyer’s trip to Ukraine in December. Telizhenko claims he was told by Oksana Shulyar, a top aide for Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Valeriy Chaly, that he should help former Democratic National Committee consultant Alexandra Chalupa in her 2016 anti-Trump efforts, which she denies. Republicans have questioned him.
“Our investigation is focused on Obama administration records from the State Department, National Archives, Department of Justice, other federal agencies, and the U.S. consulting firm Blue Star Strategies, as well as speaking with current and former U.S. government officials,” Grassley and Johnson wrote in their letter. “How, exactly, is this disinformation? Is it the one foreign national we spoke with about his ties to the Obama administration; a DNC operative; and Blue Star Strategies, a prominent Democratic consulting firm?”
Grassley also hammered Democrats on the Senate floor this week, arguing: “The hard truth is that it’s the Democrats who are engaged in a disinformation campaign, all because the facts don’t fit their political narrative. Their silence regarding the Steele dossier and fake Russia investigation yet public complaints about my legitimate oversight investigations is proof of that.”
All of this is playing out over the backdrop of a broader fight over election interference.
National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director Bill Evanina released a statement in July that said, “At this time, we’re primarily concerned with China, Russia, and Iran — although other nation states and nonstate actors could also do harm to our electoral process.” He briefly detailed the scope and objectives of each country and said the intelligence community “has been providing robust intelligence-based briefings on election security,” and “we remain committed to addressing all foreign threats to our elections.” The intelligence community will likely provide more details on meddling soon.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Marco Rubio and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called on Democratic leaders to stop “politicizing intelligence matters” after the Democrats claimed Evanina’s “statement gives a false sense of equivalence to the actions of foreign adversaries by listing three countries of unequal intent, motivation, and capability together.”
Rubio and McConnell defended Evanina. ”The intelligence community, law enforcement, election officials, and others involved in securing our elections are far better postured, and Congress dramatically better informed, than any of us were in 2016 — and our Democrat colleagues know it,” they said.
Warner admitted to the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday that the U.S. is “better prepared” to handle election meddling than it was in 2016 but argued that “the American public needs to be informed about some of the Russian disinformation campaigns that are taking place right now.”
The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program announced a reward of up to $10 million this week for information leading to the identification of cyberactors working for a foreign government to interfere in U.S. elections. And the Global Engagement Center released a 77-page report detailing Russian disinformation operations.
Robert Mueller’s special counsel report, released in April 2019, said Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” any criminal collusion between any Russians and anyone in Trump’s orbit.
