Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats' office delivered a classified report to the White House Friday telling the president that, once again, Russia tried to interfere in U.S. elections.
In a statement, Coats said that “Russia, and other foreign countries, including China and Iran, conducted influence activities and messaging campaigns targeted at the United States to promote their strategic interests.”
NYT:
The statement contained little detail, but American officials said the intelligence report found that Russia continued to use social media, fake personas and Moscow-controlled media to influence positions on opposite ideological sides with an aim of further polarizing the United States.
The report will be sent to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Under the executive order issued in September, automatic sanctions could be imposed when the government review is complete on anyone found to have tried to manipulate the vote.
Mr. Coats said in his statement that the report did not include an assessment of the effectiveness of the Russian information campaign. The public report also did not include an assessment on whether Russian attempts at election meddling were tilted toward a particular party or candidate. Current and former American officials have said that Russian propaganda efforts in the midterm elections were less than expected.
[The report] was released in accordance with an executive order ... which demands an assessment on whether anyone tried to interfere with a nationwide election 45 days after it’s held, then another assessment 45 days after that on whether such attempts were successful.
Notably, that means that the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation will give the White House their additional assessments of meddling attempts on Feb 4, 2019. Neither agency expects to make their reports public. And the government’s full report on the one kind of interference known to have happened in 2018 — Russian attempts to run influence campaigns on social media sites — will likely remain hidden.
DHS, which tracks attempts to undermine infrastructure attacks — like against actual voting machines or registration databases — has consistently said there was no serious attempt to compromise those in 2018, and a senior DHS official told BuzzFeed News last week that the agency has seen no reason to change that assessment.
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In January 2017, at President Obama's direction, ODNI issued a 25-page special declassified report detailing multiple Russian operations to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election. But Trump has repeatedly downplayed the idea that Russia helped him win the presidency.
A government official familiar with the report told BuzzFeed News that this assessment found considerably less activity than the one concerning 2016, but that the intelligence community was prepping for a return to that level in 2020.
Coats' statement indicates Russia played a larger role in trying to influence 2018 than other countries.
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“As the Director of National Intelligence reminds us, the Russians did not go away after the 2016 election," Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “Now that the Russian playbook is out in the open, we’re going to see more and more adversaries trying to take advantage of the openness of our society to sow division and attempt to manipulate Americans.”
Warner's committee is expected to try to get a copy of Coats' full report, though it won't be authorized to make it public.
NYT:
Before the election, a joint statement by the director of national intelligence, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security said state and local governments have reported attempts to access their networks. But in the statement on Friday, Mr. Coats said that no efforts had been successful.
“At this time, the I.C. does not have intelligence reporting that indicates any compromise of our nation’s election infrastructure that would have prevented voting, changed vote counts, or disrupted the ability to tally votes,” Mr. Coats said, using initials for the intelligence community.
Top US Intelligence Official Confirms Russian Propagandists Tried To Meddle In The Midterms (BuzzFeed News)
Russians Tried, but Were Unable to Compromise Midterm Elections, U.S. Says (NYT)