Russia’s alleged efforts to meddle in the 2020 elections likely are part of Vladimir Putin’s plan to make the Kremlin appear to have an outsize influence as it generates mistrust in the U.S. electoral process, national security experts say.
“Putin wants to be the center of attention,” Daniel Hoffman, the CIA’s former Moscow station chief, told the Washington Examiner. “If you look at your Google machine right now, there’s probably eight billion articles about why Russia supports Sanders and Trump. Putin doesn’t even care what the story involves — Russia being part of the story of our elections, he wins.”
Hoffman’s warning came amid a flurry of disputed reports that Russia might be attempting to help 2020 Democratic front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders win the party’s nomination and may be trying to boost President Trump’s reelection campaign.
“It makes us all think that he’s playing a role, which is the best way, with that touch of conspiracy, to really diminish our trust in our democracy,” the CIA veteran said of the KGB officer turned Russian president. “He wants our candidates to be on the defensive and to have one side accuse the other of being subjected to Russian influence.”
The issue was raised during a controversial classified House Intelligence Committee briefing earlier this month. Shelby Pierson, the election threats executive under then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, conducted part of it. During the meeting, sources cited by the New York Times on Thursday claimed Pierson warned that “Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump reelected.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation concluded that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” but did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
There was swift pushback from GOP congressmen present as well as from anonymous officials.
Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas said he could not provide specifics about a classified briefing but did say this “allegedly anti-Trump” story is “not accurate.”
His comments echo denials made by a national security official cited by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday.
“The intelligence doesn’t say that,” Tapper’s source said. “The problem is Shelby said they developed a preference for Trump. A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference — it’s a step short of that.”
The national security official added that “it’s more that they understand the president is someone they can work with … but not that they prefer him over” his Democratic opponents.
CNN reported on Sunday that “one intelligence official said that Pierson’s characterization of the intelligence was ‘misleading’ and a national security official said Pierson failed to provide the ‘nuance’ needed to accurately convey the U.S. intelligence conclusions.” And on Monday, the outlet cited a senior official claiming that “the Intelligence Community did not state that Russia is aiding the reelection of President Trump.”
Trump called it “another misinformation campaign.”
Sanders was briefed last month about a Russian interference effort aimed at disrupting the Democratic presidential primaries, unnamed sources told the Washington Post on Friday. The article noted it is not clear what form the “Russian assistance” has taken.
The independent Vermont senator responded immediately.
“Let’s be clear, the Russians want to undermine American democracy by dividing us up and, unlike the current president, I stand firmly against their efforts, and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our election,” Sanders said. “I don’t care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear: stay out of American elections.”
David Porter, the assistant section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, said Monday that Kremlin interference efforts were “brazen and disruptive” and “Russia wants to watch us tear ourselves apart.”
“It’s designed to degrade confidence at the very foundation of our democratic system and our leaders’ ability to govern,” Porter said according to CNN, adding, “It’s also designed to weaken the adversary from within by identifying existing political and social issues and driving wedges into those fractural lines.”
Hoffman said Putin’s efforts were meant to divide — and might even be meant to be discovered.
“If he’s doing it in a discoverable way, then he’s doing it to soil Sen. Sanders’s reputation. That’s what I think he was doing to then-candidate Trump too,” Hoffman said. “And that’s why he wants it to have a Kremlin return address — because it’s a little more exciting and a little bit more conspiratorial.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified this month that Russian efforts “to sow discord on both sides of an issue and to generate controversy and to generate distrust in our democratic institutions on our election process” have “never stopped.”
Fiona Hill, the National Security Council’s former Russia expert and a Ukraine impeachment witness, testified last year that the Russians sought to hurt both Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016.
“The goal of the Russians was really to put whoever became the president … under a cloud,” Hill said. “They seed misinformation. They seed doubt.”
[Opinion: Is the intelligence community planning to meddle in the 2020 election?]
