White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Russian government “hacked our election here” in the United States in 2016 in remarks during a briefing about combating disinformation.
When Psaki was asked on Thursday what is being done to reduce the spread of falsehoods in the U.S. about Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, she said that “the best antidote to misinformation is the truth.” During the same conversation, she accused Russia of hacking the 2016 election despite a lack of evidence from U.S. officials indicating actions from the Kremlin changed vote tallies.
“Matt [Miller of the National Security Council] and I have both spent many versions of time in government, and if you look back at 2014, and frankly even 2016, when Russia invaded Ukraine and then in 2016 when they, you know, of course, hacked our election here, we did not do that, right?” Psaki said according to audio obtained by the Washington Post. “We did not declassify information, and it was very hard to communicate to the public and to compete with, frankly, the disinformation war that Russia was waging.”
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Psaki said in the call, which was also attended by the National Security Council’s Matt Miller and several TikTok influencers, that the Biden administration declassified information over the past several months to call out Putin’s likely intentions and to make public the alleged false flags Russia might be planning to carry out, which she called a “hugely significant step.”
The White House did not respond to questions about what specifically Psaki was trying to convey when she said Russia “hacked” the 2016 election.
Psaki has repeatedly condemned the “Big Lie” — or the belief that former President Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election. Biden defeated Trump in the Electoral College by 306-232 in 2020, and Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton 304-227 in 2016.
While the U.S. government has not unearthed any evidence that the Kremlin changed any vote tallies, U.S. intelligence officials did conclude Russian operatives were behind the hacking of Democratic emails in 2016. Russian military intelligence interfered in the 2016 presidential election, in part by spearphishing Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email account and hacking the DNC’s email systems, then providing those emails to WikiLeaks for dissemination, Robert Mueller’s special counsel report concluded. Russia has denied its involvement, and WikiLeaks has denied receiving emails from Russia.
The special counsel said the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” but it “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Mueller also said that “GRU officers also targeted individuals and entities involved in the administration of the elections” but that the special counsel’s office “did not investigate further.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a 2019 report concluding that “Russian government-affiliated cyber actors conducted an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure in the run-up to the 2016,” and 67% of Democrats surveyed in 2018 baselessly clung to the belief that that “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President.”
But the committee found “no evidence” that vote tallies were altered or that voter registry files were deleted or modified. The Trump-Russia investigation was filled with serious missteps and concealed exculpatory information from the FISA court, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December 2019 report found in a report criticizing the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to FISA warrants against Trump campaign officials and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier.
The Senate Intelligence Committee also released a bipartisan report in February 2020 criticizing the Obama administration for being unprepared to combat Russia’s election interference in 2016.
The January 2017 intelligence community assessment from the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI stated that the Department of Homeland Security “assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.” Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016,” and Russia worked to undermine faith in U.S. democracy and to harm Clinton’s electability amid a “clear preference” for Trump, the assessment concluded with “high confidence.”
Adm. Mike Rogers of the NSA diverged from CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey on one key aspect, expressing only “moderate confidence” rather than “high confidence” that Putin “aspired to help” Trump’s election chances by “discrediting” Clinton.
A report from the Republicans leading the House Intelligence Committee in 2018 concluded they had “identified significant intelligence tradecraft failings that undermine confidence in the ICA judgments regarding Putin’s strategic objectives.”
Brennan revealed in his memoir that he overruled two senior managers from the CIA mission center “who questioned the confidence level on the judgment in the assessment related to Russia favoring Mr. Trump’s candidacy.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report in April defending the 2017 assessment, saying it “presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference.”
Psaki’s outreach to TikTok influencers is notable. The Chinese-owned social media giant thrived during the first year of Biden’s presidency following unsuccessful efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on the popular app. Biden officials emphasize a national security review of the app is underway.
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The Trump administration labeled TikTok a national security threat due to concerns that the app could be exploited by the Chinese Communist Party to obtain U.S. user data illicitly. Shouzi Chew began serving as CEO for TikTok last April, solidifying the influence of the Chinese parent company over the app.
There is reportedly an organized campaign to pay Russian TikTok influencers to promote pro-Putin claims about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a tactic that was slammed as ineffective by one misinformation researcher because if you give “a bunch of people with a lot of followers the exact same script, you’re gonna have overlap.”
