The statement, which also indicated that Iran and China would prefer a Trump loss in November, was blamed by Democrats as affirming their strategy to lean on the administration for additional revelations to help educate the public.
“Normally, the client of the intelligence community is the president, the national security apparatus, the secretary of defense and members of Congress. “But every four years, the customer has to be the American people,” he said. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview.
“They are the decision-makers on Nov. 3. And they are paying for this intelligence and they would be able to see it,” added King, who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate.
Whether Democrats succeed in their attempt to wrest more information in the public domain could be critical to Moscow’s latest interference tribunal, they said, as well as to protect Biden from the attacks that Hillary Clinton has made in recent weeks. the 2016 campaign dogged.
And Democrats are unlikely to end their push yet. While some lawmakers acknowledged that the statement was in fact significantly more detailed, they said it was still interested in Chinese and Iranian interference with Russia’s more sober efforts. The claims about China and Iran lack, in particular, the degree of specificity that Evanina offered about Russia.
“Unfortunately, today’s statement treats three more actors of different intentions and capacities as equal threats to our democratic elections,” said spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) And House Information Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) In a statement. joint statement on Friday.
Pelosi has taken the lead role in sending the party’s message about foreign interference in the elections, in a shift from its approach in 2016, when Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office and the top Democrat of the nation was.
Increasingly, she accuses the intelligence community of withholding important details from the public, including information about the Kremlin’s intentions. Pelosi and Senate Leader for Minorities Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) wrote a public letter to the FBI last month demanding a briefing across Congress on “specific” interference threats against lawmakers.
Their demands come as intelligence officials have privately acknowledged to lawmakers in recent days that Russia is trying to heighten Trump’s re-election prospects and denigrate Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate.
Despite the criticism from Pelosi and Schiff, the new revelation seems to satisfy the First Chamber of the First Chamber Intelligence Mark Warner, who made a joint statement with Commission President Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) That Evanina in the generally praised for the revelations. King has also released the new releases.
“Call on Mr Derkach, who is a Ukrainian ally of Russia – I think that’s important to know, because now that we’re seeing material with his name on it, we’ll know where it came from,” he said. said King.
Top of mind for Democrats is the occurrence of what many see as the mistakes of 2016, when the Obama administration decided to sit on the most explosive details of Russia’s attempt to help Trump in the presidential election. At the moment, Obama’s aides are defending the decision as an attempt to take steps that Republicans would interpret as an attempt to influence the election. But both in real time and in retrospect, the top congressional Democrats saw Obama’s retention as an important statement.
And this time, they are even more afraid that Trump – long disturbed by the perception that Russia helped him win the presidency – might try to prove Russian interference in 2020.
“Democrats were disappointed with how the Obama administration dealt with the threat in 2016, and we made that known – they lost valuable time in informing the public and inoculating themselves against Russia’s intervention campaign,” an old man acknowledged -Democratic aide.
“But worse than not acting fast enough, the threat is downplayed when you know it exists, creating a false equivalence between countries, and trying to confuse the political advantage of one party,” the assistant continued. “This is what the Trump administration is doing.”
Evanina insisted on Friday that more public details would come, “with the goal of better informing Americans so that they can play a critical role in protecting our elections.”
Despite these guarantees, rank-and-file senators who have been informed about recent intelligence have issued their warnings in recent days.
“Shocked and shocked – I just left a 90 minute classified briefing on foreign malicious threats ahead of our elections,” he wrote. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) In a recent tweet. “From espionage to sabotage, Americans need to see and hear these reports.”
“Ask a friend – what’s the point of spending billions of dollars on intelligence gathering if you discover a foreign agent trying to manipulate your country’s domestic politics, keep it hidden and do nothing about it?” added scenario Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
Prior to Friday’s revelation of the administration’s, Democrats’ concerns about Russian interference in 2020 had reached such a low point that some even considered the most extreme step: public disclosure of classified intelligence on the floor of the House or Senate, where senators are protected from consequences under the speech or debate clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“I will not take anything off the table,” Warner, a member of the Gang of Aight who receives the highest-level intelligence briefings to Congress, said in an interview Thursday. “I did not give up hope that we would not release that information. But it is an absolute duty that the American people know. ‘
Murphy agreed that reading the most urgent intelligence on the Senate floor should be a last resort if the administration does not downgrade it. But he said he would not be the one to take that step.
‘I honestly do not know what additional information is in the hands of the Gang of Aight. That speaks to my inability to set strategy. But what I have seen is really important for the American public to know, ”Murphy said in an interview. “I have no plans to make classified information public, but somehow form or form, if the administration is not willing to tell the American people the details of this interference, then someone should.”
The speech or debate clause is rarely used to justify the disclosure of classified information. In 1971 then took sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) read the Pentagon Papers in the congressional record, and was immune to federal prosecutors because of those constitutional protections.
Warner, in justifying his position, referred to countries that make their citizens “better off” by learning more about foreign efforts to intervene in their elections, and said the Trump administration should do the same without sensitive sources of intelligence. and methods to compromise.
He also said the US should take into account the mistakes of the Obama administration, which came under heavy scrutiny in a two-part report by the House of Representatives on its handling of Russia’s invasion.
‘The idea that [the Trump administration] would not learn, and allow knowledge of a Russian disinformation campaign to be carried out would be unconscious, “Warner added.
Several lawmakers, however, believe it will not ultimately be necessary to disclose sensitive information on the floor of the Senate. Rubio, Warner’s opponent at the top of the intelligence commission, said Warner “has the right to do so”, but called for caution.
“Ultimately, I suspect that if everyone is patient, you will find that the career professionals in the intelligence community, every week that goes by, will release information in a way that does not compromise our resources and our methods, and it “American people are delivering what they want,” Rubio said. “So I think we’ll be somewhere else in a few weeks.”
Intelligence officials began informing all lawmakers this past week about election security and the threats of foreign interference, as Democrats urged the Trump administration to detail the threats publicly.
But Democrats say these steps are no substitute for informing Americans if details of a specific plot are known, especially with the election less than three months away. Other lawmakers are seeking immediate sanctions. For example, Rubio and sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has been pushing for months for legislation that would impose sanctions on Russia as another country in U.S. elections.
“None of these people are Republicans or Democrats,” Rubio said. “They want us to fight each other, and there are now more peoples involved.”
POLITICO has reported that in addition to its public letter, Top House and Senate Democrats urged the FBI to brief Congress on classified details about Derkach’s efforts to spread false information about Biden to congressional investigators.
The classified addendum to her letter specifically mentions Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) -Examines that Biden and his son Hunter are targeted as a source of their concerns, and claims that the GOP-leading investigation uses Russian disinformation to tarnish a political opponent. Johnson denied those allegations.
Some Democrats, including Warner, have speculated that Evanina and others may be pushing for internal political motivated pressure on how much information to reveal about Russia’s intentions, especially given the way Trump would react. The president has refused to publicly condemn Russia for its interference in the 2016 campaign, and has questioned the intelligence community’s conclusion that the mediation was intended to help him win.
Still, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expect the intelligence community to reveal more information in the coming weeks. Senators based on classified briefings with Evanina and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe earlier this week said the Trump administration was prepared to make more information public, in an apparent knot to Democrats’ concerns.
Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.
