U.S. Spy Agencies Reject Trump Claim of China Election Meddling

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. intelligence community concluded with “high confidence” that China didn’t attempt to change the outcome of the 2020 election, an assessment that contradicts repeated assertions by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

“We assess 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,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote in an unclassified report on Tuesday. “China sought stability in its relationship with the United States, did not view either election outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk getting caught meddling.”

The report concluded that, while no foreign actors “attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process,” Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered influence operations to hurt President Joe Biden’s candidacy, favoring Trump just as the intelligence community says he did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.

“Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the U.S.,” the report said.

Russia has long denied meddling in U.S. elections.

Before last year’s election, Trump and key allies repeatedly raised the specter of Chinese interference. The president ridiculed FBI Director Christopher Wray for telling Congress prior to the vote that Russia was seeking to hurt Biden’s presidential campaign through social media and influence operations.

China “is a FAR greater threat than Russia, Russia, Russia,” Trump said in a tweet in September.

In December, then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe held up the report, saying it needed to more fully reflect the national security threat posed by China’s efforts, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the information.

In addition, Tuesday’s report said Iran carried out a campaign to hurt Trump’s 2020 campaign.

“Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s re-election prospects -- though without directly promoting his rivals -- undermine public confidence in the electoral process and U.S. institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the U.S.,” according to the report.

The intelligence community also determined that Lebanese Hezbollah, Cuba and Venezuela were involved in small-scale efforts to influence the election while cyber criminals -- likely driven by financial interests -- disrupted some preparations for the vote.

More broadly, there was no foreign interference with “voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results,” the intelligence report concluded.

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