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Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized operations last year intended to hurt Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and support President Trump’s re-election while sowing discord to exacerbate tension in the U.S., a U.S. intelligence assessment released Tuesday said.
From the archives (August 2020): Russia aims to run down Biden candidacy in support of Trump’s re-election, says U.S. counterintelligence official
In addition, Iran carried out a multipronged covert influence operation intended to undercut Trump’s re-election chances but didn’t directly promote his rivals, the unclassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.
This effort was approved by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and involved Iran’s military and intelligence agencies, which used both overt and covert messaging and conducted cyber operations, it said.
China didn’t undertake efforts to interfere in the election, considering but ultimately choosing not to go ahead, the report said.
Despite the various foreign campaigns, however, the report said there were no indications any foreign actor had attempted to alter “any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 U.S. elections,” including voter registration systems, individual ballots, vote tabulation systems, or the reporting of results.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
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