The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security investigated allegations that foreign governments controlled election infrastructure in the 2020 election and did not find the claims credible, unearthing no evidence that any foreign actors compromised voting machines to change the results.
DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in the wake of the November election that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” The statement followed a viral all-caps tweet sent by Trump that quoted One America News Network, claiming that “DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE.”
“We are aware of multiple public claims that one or more foreign governments — including Venezuela, Cuba, or China — owned, directed, or controlled election infrastructure used in the 2020 federal elections; implemented a scheme to manipulate election infrastructure; or tallied, changed, or otherwise manipulated vote counts,” DOJ and DHS said in a Tuesday report. “Following the election, the Department of Justice, including the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, including CISA, investigated the public claims and determined that they are not credible.”
Trump allies such as Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, and Sidney Powell, who defended retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, made unsubstantiated claims about Dominion Voting Systems being influenced by foreign countries.
The joint DOJ, FBI, DHS, and CISA report said the agencies “have no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor prevented voting, changed votes, or disrupted the ability to tally votes or to transmit election results in a timely manner; altered any technical aspect of the voting process; or otherwise compromised the integrity of voter registration information of any ballots cast during 2020 federal elections.”
Powell appeared alongside Giuliani and Trump campaign counsel Jenna Ellis during a 90-minute press conference in November, claiming Dominion software was created “at the direction” of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to steal elections and that the machines “can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden.” Giuliani and Trump’s legal team attempted to distance themselves from Powell, but Giuliani continued making claims about Dominion.
Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani in January, seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages for what the company called his “viral disinformation campaign.” Dominion’s lawsuit noted Giuliani claimed on Fox Business in November that the company was owned by Smartmatic and that Smartmatic was founded to “fix elections” as he touted its alleged connections to Chavez — claims repeated on television, his radio show, and elsewhere, which Dominion denies.
INTELLIGENCE ANALYSTS DOWNPLAYED CHINESE ELECTION INFLUENCE
“The IC — including the FBI and the IC elements of DHS — has previously assessed that it would be difficult for a foreign actor to manipulate election processes at scale without detection by intelligence collection, post-election audits, or physical and cyber security monitoring of voting systems across the country,” the new DOJ and DHS report noted, adding that “we have no evidence — not through intelligence collection on the foreign actors themselves, not through physical security and cybersecurity monitoring of voting systems across the country, not through post-election audits, and not through any other means — that a foreign government or other actors compromised election infrastructure to manipulate election results.”
Then-Attorney General William Barr disputed the claims Giuliani, Powell, and others were making in December, saying, “DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.” Barr reportedly told Trump on Dec. 1 that the allegations leveled by Trump allies were “just bulls—.”
The DOJ and DHS report indicated that “broad Russian and Iranian campaigns targeting multiple critical infrastructure sectors did compromise the security of several networks that managed some election functions, but they did not materially affect the integrity of voter data, the ability to vote, the tabulation of votes, or the timely transmission of election results.”
Trump’s spy chief John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray held a press conference in late October warning that Russia and Iran gained access to U.S. voter registration information, and Ratcliffe said Iran was sending spoofed emails pretending to be members of the Proud Boys, a far-right organization, designed to damage Trump. The spy chief also weighed in in October to dismiss the idea that the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
“We identified several incidents when Russian, Chinese, and Iranian government-affiliated actors materially impacted the security of networks associated with or pertaining to US political organizations, candidates, and campaigns during 2020 federal elections,” the new DOJ and DHS report read, noting that “several such actors gathered at least some information they could have released in influence operations, but ultimately we did not see any such materials deployed, modified, or destroyed.”
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The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Biden spy chief Avril Haines, also released a report on foreign influence in the 2020 election.
“We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the U.S.,” ODNI concluded, adding, “We assess that Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects — though without directly promoting his rivals — undermine public confidence in the electoral process and U.S. institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the U.S.”
The spy office added: “We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.” But ODNI conceded that the national intelligence officer for cyber “assesses, however, that China did take some steps to try to undermine former President Trump’s reelection.”
