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A declassified report by US intelligence released stated that Russia and Iran undertook campaigns to influence the 2020 Presidential election, but intelligence agencies found no evidence that foreign actors tried to alter votes or other technical aspects of the voting process.
According to The Hill, the two foreign campaigns sought to influence the election for different results — Russia, to promote former President Donald Trump for the second term at the White House, while Iran went against him — but among five key judgments outlined in the declassified report is that no foreign actor interfered in the 2020 voting process.
A classified version of the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was presented to Trump, congressional leadership and committees with oversight over intelligence operations on January 7.
The report did not state whether it was made available to President Biden, who had not yet entered office at that time.
“The IC (intelligence community) identified some successful compromises of state and local government networks prior to Election Day–as well as a higher volume of unsuccessful attempts–that we assess were not directed at altering election processes. Some foreign actors, such as Iran and Russia, spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to undermine public confidence in election processes and results,” the report read.
“We have high confidence in these judgments because a range of Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the Kremlin’s interests worked to affect US public perceptions. We also have high confidence because of the consistency of themes in Russia’s influence efforts across the various influence actors and throughout the campaign, as well as in Russian leaders ‘ assessments of the candidates,” the report added.
The report pointed out that a key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of people linked to Russian intelligence to “launder influence narratives including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations” against Biden — through US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, some of whom were close to former President Trump and his administration.
