Russia Seeks to Boost Trump in 2024 Election, U.S. Intelligence Officials Say

Other foreign-influence operations in the U.S. include attempts by Iran to covertly encourage protests against the war in Gaza, officials say

WASHINGTON—The Russian government has launched a “whole-of-government” effort to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and favors Republican candidate Donald Trump in the race, senior U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday.

[OCS: Are these the same senior intelligence officials who work for the Biden Administration and may be at risk for interfering in previous presidential elections and suppressing legitimate reporting of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which had the potential of altering election results? Are these the intelligence officials who were associated with the 51 members of the intelligence community who suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story had the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign?

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Committee on the Judiciary, and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released a joint interim staff report titled “The Intelligence Community 51: How CIA Contractors Colluded with The Biden Campaign to Mislead American Voters.”

The officials didn’t mention Trump by name, but said that Russia’s current activity—described as covert social-media use and other online propaganda efforts—mirrored the 2020 and 2016 election cycles, when Moscow also favored Trump and sought to undermine Democratic candidates, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

“We haven’t observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections,” a senior official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said, during a media briefing summarizing intelligence on foreign threats to the election.

[OCS: Sounds like bullshit, especially since Trump checkmated many of Russia’s activities, while the Democrats were more apt to follow Obama’s policy of appeasement. The progressive communist democrats are more aligned with Russia than the Republicans.]

Along with Russia, Iran has become “increasingly aggressive” in its foreign influence efforts, including in recent weeks by covertly encouraging protests against the war in Gaza, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, said in a separate statement on Tuesday.

The warnings underscore how U.S. adversaries are continuing to exploit social-media platforms and other avenues to manipulate public opinion, despite efforts by the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to expose and crack down on the influence operations. 

[OCS: Sounds like another prelude to censoring dissident voices and de-platforming individuals and organizations that put forth counter-narratives.]

The Russian embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the Iranian government didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

[OCS: This is an old journalistic trick of asking for comment shortly before publication to provide a semblance of fairness. It is the journalist's equivalent of asking if you have stopped beating your wife.]

Russia was seeking to influence specific voting groups, including those in swing states, promote divisive narratives and denigrate specific politicians, the officials who briefed reporters said. They declined to provide details about the voters or politicians who have been targeted.

[OCS: This is much like House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), who swore he had “secret evidence” showing a link between Trump and the Russians and has yet to reveal it—even after documents and testimony were declassified—acts for which he was condemned and censured by the House.

Whereas for years Representative Schiff abused this trust by citing evidence of collusion that—as is clear from reports by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, and Special Counsel Durham—does not exist;

Whereas by repeatedly telling these falsehoods, Representative Schiff purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people; <Source>

The Kremlin is also working to influence members of Congress and is broadly seeking to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, the officials said.

Moscow employs commercial firms to obscure its involvement and attempts to spread propaganda by planting it with influential Americans, the senior ODNI official said.

[OCS: Many of these “commercial firms” are Democrat-run law firms and lobbyist shops.]

Officials indicated that the activity witnessed so far this election cycle isn’t on the scale or scope seen in 2016, when Russia’s actions included a hack-and-leak of Democratic Party emails, rudimentary cyber-probing of some state election systems and other actions intended to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

[OCS: There is substantial evidence that Russia did not hack and leak anti-Hillary information and that the Democratic National Committee REFUSED to allow the FBI to examine the hacked servers.

To this day, the intelligence agencies refuse to release information on murdered DNC employee Seth Rich, the suspected leaker, whose death was attributed to a “botched robbery” where he was shot twice in the back and nothing was taken. Moreover, they refused to release his laptop, which mysteriously disappeared and reappeared during the course of the investigation.]

But they said Moscow and other countries were likely to increase their efforts to influence the race as the November election date drew closer.

​​Developments in artificial intelligence pose additional risks to the 2024 election, the intelligence officials said, calling it a “malign influence accelerant” that allowed bad actors to quickly create convincing audio and video deepfakes. The technology was used during recent elections in Taiwan and India for deceptive purposes, the officials said.

“We are monitoring foreign actors seeking to create deepfakes of politicians, flood the information space with false or misleading information, to sow doubt about what is real and to amplify narratives,” the ODNI official said.

[OCS: There is little doubt that these intelligence agencies continue their illegal surveillance of Americans on American soil.]

The Justice Department announced Tuesday a takedown of computer infrastructure in the Netherlands that enabled a Russia-linked disinformation bot farm that had been operating on X, formerly Twitter. The bots, numbering nearly a thousand accounts, relied on artificial intelligence to create bogus user profiles and spammed posts in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the Justice Department, which relied on cooperation from Dutch authorities to disrupt the operation.

U.S. officials said the operation was financed by the Kremlin and organized by an employee of a state-owned media outlet who is a member of a Russian intelligence service. It was the first time the U.S. had publicly accused a foreign government of using generative AI technology in support of a foreign-influence operation against Americans, officials said.

[OCS: Where is the independent corroboration from Congress? Are there indictments? How can you trust those who continue to lie to the American public?]

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