Former top intelligence officials waded into the debate over foreign election interference as top leaders in the Trump administration suggest China poses the greatest election security threat, while Democrats accuse them of twisting the intelligence to steer attention away from Russia.
The most senior of those ex-officials to emerge is Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence from 2017 to 2019, who, according to a Washington Post report published Wednesday, “is firm that Russia is the most significant foreign threat to the 2020 election.” He is quoted as telling the outlet that the Russians “clearly have demonstrated the capacity to do things other countries either can’t do or have decided not to do, and they have a long, long history there.”
His view aligns with that of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and other Democrats who have criticized the way the Trump administration has addressed and portrayed the election meddling threat with the November contest fast approaching.
John Ratcliffe, who is currently the director of national intelligence, Attorney General William Barr, and White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien have either intimated or outright stated that China, not Russia, poses the biggest threat to the 2020 election.
The clash over what to make of the election interference landscape came to a head when Bill Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, released an intelligence assessment in August, warning that Russia is “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate” Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, including that “pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls — to undermine” the former vice president’s candidacy. The same statement also said China sees President Trump as “unpredictable” and “prefers” that he not win reelection and that it is “expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020” to “shape the policy environment” and “pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests.” In addition, the counterintelligence official said Iran “seeks to undermine” Trump’s presidency.
On Thursday, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against Derkach. The department said the Trump administration “is focused on exposing Russian malign influence campaigns and protecting our upcoming elections from foreign interference” and called the action “a clear signal to Moscow and its proxies that this activity will not be tolerated.” Sanctions were also levied against three Russian nationals for supporting the Internet Research Agency, a Russian social media troll farm that the United States has blamed for election interference efforts in 2016 and 2018 and is believed to be doing so in 2020.
Ratcliffe said in August that “China poses a greater national security threat to the U.S. than any other nation — economically, militarily and technologically,” and “that includes threats of election influence and interference.” He said China is “concerned” that Trump being reelected would “lead to a continuation of policies that they perceive to be ‘anti-China.'” Barr said last week that he believes that China, not Russia, is the most assertive in election meddling, claiming his assessment came from him having “seen the intelligence.” Barr also said China was the most aggressive at “trying to influence the United States.”
But Schiff called Barr’s comments “flat-out false” and said that Evanina’s assessment said that “Russia was actively interfering and actively engaging across a range of measures to influence the outcome,” while “China had a preference.”
“Interestingly, some of the other administration officials have been trying to mislead the public by saying that China is the bigger threat to the country, and speaking in global terms because of the rising power of China,” the California Democrat said over the weekend. “And they are using that answer in response to questions about the election, but they are at least careful in their misleading the public by not saying that they’re a greater threat to the election — they’re just saying generically they’re a bigger threat. But what Bill Barr just did in that statement was just flat-out mislead the American people.”
When asked about Barr’s comments last week, O’Brien said that “I agree with him 100%.”
“When it comes to the election, everything that they’re doing across the board,” O’Brien said of the Chinese effort. “Whether it’s political influence through the Confucius Institutes. Whether it’s them trying to influence business leaders by saying, ‘If you don’t support us in the U.S., your companies won’t have opportunities in China, and convey that to your governors and convey that to your political leaders.’ … The massive activities of the Chinese in the cyber realm.”
“I think what we have with elections, and what the intelligence community has made clear, is first, you have China, which has the most massive program to influence the United States politically, you have Iran, and you have Russia,” O’Brien said.
The report about Coats came one day after Sue Gordon, who was his principal deputy director until she left the intelligence community at the same time he did last year, wrote in the Washington Post that “Russia’s intent is to undermine American democracy” and called the Russians “sophisticated, experienced, and relentless.” She also wrote that “China’s efforts, by contrast, focus on shaping U.S. policy and exploiting U.S. institutions to its advantage — particularly economic advantage.”
“Our election infrastructure is better organized to both detect and protect from attack than it was in 2016 or 2018,” Gordon said, adding that public information sharing, integrated agency efforts, and proactive countermeasures improved the U.S.’s “defensive posture.” But she lamented that “the national conversation around election security has turned vitriolic, diversionary, and unhelpful.”
“When intelligence assessments are described as biased, when federal institutions are decried as inept or corrupt, when vague fears of widespread tampering with our physical election infrastructure are advanced, and when disagreement over policy and approach turns to accusation of illegitimacy, our enemies’ destructive goals are advanced as we busily attack ourselves,” Gordon said.
Ratcliffe drew the ire of the Democrats when he announced in August that he is replacing election security briefings that are conducted in person with written products over concerns about classified leaks and politicization. Coats also criticized the move.
The Trump administration is facing a fresh political firestorm after it was revealed this week that Brian Murphy, a member of the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, filed a whistleblower complaint claiming that, in May 2020, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf “instructed Mr. Murphy to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.” The complaint also said Wolf “stated that these instructions specifically originated from” O’Brien.
White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews told the Washington Examiner that O’Brien “has never sought to dictate the Intelligence Community’s focus on threats to the integrity of our elections or on any other topic; any contrary suggestion by a disgruntled former employee, who he has never met or heard of, is false and defamatory.” She said O’Brien “has consistently and publicly advocated for a holistic focus on all threats to our elections – whether from Russia, Iran, China, or any other malign actor.”
U.S. intelligence officials said the U.S. is better prepared to defend against election meddling in 2020 than 2016, and DHS said it hasn’t seen a ramp-up in Russian cyberactivity like four years ago. A DHS bulletin this month warned that Russia is “likely to continue amplifying criticisms of vote-by-mail.”
Investigative reporter Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, states that Coats “continued to harbor the secret belief … that Putin had something on Trump” but noted the theory was “unsupported by intelligence proof.” Robert Mueller’s special counsel report said Russians interfered in 2016 in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” including through Russia hacking the Democratic National Committee’s email systems, but it “did not establish” criminal collusion between Russians and anyone in Trump’s orbit.
