Russian intelligence operations were closer to the top actions of Trump campaign than previously known in 2016, the report states. The commission also documented ongoing disinformation of people with Russian allies well past the 2016 elections – findings so alarming that the two-party House of Representatives committee called for several changes to protect national security in 2020.
“Campaigns should recognize that campaign staff are attractive targets for foreign intelligence services,” the commission said.
“The threat is ongoing,” Republican Senator Richard Burr, who chaired much of the commission’s investigation, said in a statement Tuesday. “My hope is that this report and the work of the commission will give the American people more insight into the threats to our nation and the steps needed to stop them.”
For Democrats, the report promoted a new round of talks for reform and nationality of national security in U.S. elections.
The findings of the bipartisan intelligence commission on Russia “should be an alarm clock for the nation”, five Democratic senators – Martin Heinrich, Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Kamala Harris and Michael Bennet – commented on Tuesday’s release of the report. . “Russia is interacting again in the 2020 US elections to help Donald Trump, and some of the president’s colleagues are stepping up these efforts.”
Wyden also said that editorial information in the report that has not yet been released to the public “is directly relevant to Russia’s interference in the 2020 elections.”
But the Trump campaign and some Republicans responded to the report with backward criticism and insisted there was “no collusion,” instead of questions about how U.S. policy by 2020 could still be vulnerable to foreign disinformation and interference.
Earlier, the Mueller investigation had difficulty recovering ‘actions by campaign officials, releases of WikiLeaks and efforts by Russians to spread hacked documents and disinformation that could help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Attorneys for Justice Department have also claimed that a Russian propaganda attempt by social media continued in the 2018 election.
Russia’s disinformation tensions continue throughout the current election cycle, the Prime Minister’s Committee has now announced.
“The Committee observed that several Russian government actors from the end of 2016 to at least January 2020 consistently disseminated overlapping false narratives that sought to discredit investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 US elections and disseminate false information about the 2016 events,” the committee said. said the report.
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and those around him are part of the ongoing effort, as condemned by Trump campaign president Paul Manafort and his longtime colleague Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer who continued to disinformation this year. and propaganda tweet, according to the report.
Trump regularly makes false statements in speeches and on Twitter and attacks the Russian investigation and FBI as well. As one recent example, the president disseminated misleading information about Biden recently after U.S. intelligence had marked it as Russian propaganda.
“They are working on the same goals again this year, and Trump is refusing to turn down their assistance,” Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said on Tuesday.
The Trump campaign downplayed the accusation, saying it was Democrats who in 2016 ran with foreign information through commissioned investigations into Trump and Russia.
Although the Biden campaign has stated that it will not accept information from foreign sources by 2020, the Trump campaign has refused to say whether it has accepted information from foreign sources.
Some Trump allies, including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, have openly collaborated with foreign actors to spread anti-Biden conspiracies. Giuliani even met with a Ukrainian lawmaker who was recently branded by American intelligence as part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
What comes next
The 15-member intelligence commission used its report Tuesday to enact legislation, law enforcement and cultural change in the nation’s approach to national security, particularly in connection with election interferences.
The commission wrote strong, lengthy warnings about how campaigns, political leaders and other influential Americans should be on guard to combat foreign malfeasance.
The report explained how “hostile actors” could exploit Americans and American institutions in 2016. “The freedom of expression at the root of our democratic society became an opportunity for Russian influence to hide in plain sight,” the commission wrote.
The committee called for changes to both laws and the approach of the Executive Department for Foreign Interference. Among several recommendations, the commission said loopholes should be closed in laws governing foreign lobbying, campaigns should receive better intelligence briefings and training and better staffing, and the FBI should have more robust procedures to respond to hacks in related to elections. Political groups and others, from business leaders to non-governmental organizations, need to realize that they are “likely to be targeted” by foreign intelligence services, the commission added.
“The Russian government treats oligarchs, organized crime, and related businesses as tools of the state, rather than as independent, private entities. The Kremlin uses these entities to pursue Kremlin priorities, including money laundering, sanction evasion, and influence over operations. This is a fundamentally different model than in the United States, “the commission wrote. “The U.S. government needs the tools and authorities in place to determine whether a non-governmental entity is acting on behalf of the Russian state and mitigates the threat of counter-intelligence.”
CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Marshall Cohen and Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.
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