The Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee report concealed key information about Iranian election meddling efforts in 2020 and misled about the intelligence community debate over Chinese influence activities during the 2020 election.
The 2021 Intelligence Community Assessment concluded that Russia sought to help then-President Donald Trump’s reelection chances and harm now-President Joe Biden’s candidacy and that Iran sought to hurt Trump’s reelection efforts. The spy agencies had a split on China, with the majority view saying China did not deploy influence efforts in the 2020 election and the minority view assessing China did exactly that — to hurt Trump’s reelection chances.
But the Jan. 6 committee report, released in December 2022, summarized the 2021 intelligence assessment as: “Russia was deeply engaged in disinformation activities intended to influence the outcome by supporting President Trump while disparaging then-candidate Biden; Iran also engaged in efforts to influence the election’s outcome, but unlike Russia, did not actively promote any candidate; and China considered opportunities to influence the election’s outcome, but ultimately decided that potential costs outweighed any foreseeable benefits.”
The committee left out that Iran had sought to undermine Trump’s reelection chances and skirted past the minority view concluding that China had tried to influence the 2020 election against Trump.
The 2021 intelligence assessment released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded that the Russian government conducted influence operations aimed at “denigrating” Biden and “supporting” Trump.
It also found that Iran “carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut” Trump’s “re-election prospects” — a fact that was not included in the Jan. 6 committee’s report.
The assessment also concluded 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 the national intelligence officer for cyber at ODNI assessed that “China did take some steps to try to undermine former President Trump’s reelection.”
The minority view is not referenced nor described in the Capitol riot report.
KEY INTEL OFFICIAL STILL SAYS CHINA TRIED TO INFLUENCE 2020 ELECTION
Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released a Jan. 7, 2021, memo supporting the minority view on China — something for which the Capitol riot committee blasted him.
The Jan. 6 committee said Ratcliffe “had been in office seven months and lacked any prior intelligence experience” and noted that he said he had written that he wanted to “lead by example and offer my analytic assessment.”
The committee noted that Ratcliffe argued the majority view on China did not “fully and accurately reflect the scope of the Chinese government’s efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections.”
The Jan. 6 committee then dismissed Ratcliffe’s conclusions as baseless and political.
“Aside from the DNI’s very willingness to conclude, in conformity with then-President Trump’s contention but without reference to any supporting data, that the IC’s combined analytic judgment on China was wrong, this seems a very odd document for the DNI to have chosen to issue the day after the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol,” the committee said.
But Ratcliffe’s memo did reference supporting data, specifically referencing the view from the national intelligence officer for cyber and from other dissenting viewpoints inside the intelligence community. He also cited an analytic ombudsman report that looked at how intelligence analysts look at foreign interference and influence, including those related to China.
Ratcliffe contended in his early January 2021 letter that “the majority view expressed in this ICA with regard to China’s actions to influence the election fall short of the mark” and that “alternative viewpoints on China’s election interference efforts have not been appropriately tolerated.”
He said the (yet-classified at the time) intelligence assessment “gives the false impression” that the national intelligence officer for cyber “is the only analyst who holds the minority view on China.”
“I am adding my voice in support of the stated minority view — based on all available sources of intelligence, with definitions consistently applied, and reached independent of political considerations or undue pressure — that the People’s Republic of China sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections,” Ratcliffe said in that early 2021 memo.
The minority view argued that “China took at least some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection chances, primarily through social media and official public statements and media.”
Christopher Porter, who was the national intelligence officer for cyber from 2019 until the summer of 2022, was the named author of the minority stance. Porter became head of Google Cloud Threat Intelligence in June 2022, and he has continued banging the drum about China’s anti-Trump influence efforts during the 2020 election.
In the early January 2021 memo, Ratcliffe also referenced the 14-page report put together by Barry Zulauf, an analytic ombudsman and longtime intelligence official, who said there was a split in how the intelligence community handled Russia versus China.
“Given analytic differences in the way Russia and China analysts examined their targets, China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. The analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the [Trump] administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies,” Zulauf concluded.
The ombudsman report, Ratcliffe said at the time, “includes concerning revelations about the politicization of China election influence reporting and of undue pressure being brought to bear on analysts who offered an alternative view based on the intelligence.”
In late 2020, ODNI missed its Dec. 18 deadline to submit its classified assessment on foreign meddling in that election amid the debate within the spy agencies over the role played by China.
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In early January 2021, a source familiar with the process of creating the assessment told the Washington Examiner that one reason for the delay in submitting the assessment to Congress, in addition to the internal China debate, was a desire to get past Jan. 6, 2021, to ensure the report was not exploited for political reasons during the debate over the Electoral College vote certification by Congress.
The source cited concerns about how politicians, such as outspoken Trump critics, including then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), might exploit the report. But it also sought to avoid allowing conspiracy theorists such as Trump-allied lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood to make misleading claims about the assessment that would make their way to Trump and that he could latch on to if refused to concede.
