Intelligence Community officials told lawmakers in closed-door briefings that Russia is not actively interfering in U.S. elections on behalf of a particular candidate, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
“The [Intelligence Community] has not concluded that the Kremlin is directly aiding any candidate’s re-election or any other candidates’ election,” read an unclassified report given to the lawmakers. “Nor have we concluded that the Russians will definitely choose to try to do so in 2020.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Ca.) pushed back against that conclusion in the first of two briefings by intelligence officials, saying their assessment differed from a classified hearing in February. After the February hearing, given by top election security official Shelby Pierson, Democrats reported that intelligence officials had concluded Russia was attempting to boost President Trump in the U.S. elections.
However, other intelligence officials subsequently told media outlets that Pierson had exaggerated the extent of their findings in the hearing, and Democrats leaked that interpretation to the media.
Two intelligence officials defended the conclusions of the March briefings, saying agencies had based their conclusions on concrete facts separate from political considerations, the Times noted. The officials giving the briefings took care to emphasize the lack of direct evidence that Russia was attempting to boost any particular candidate.






Comments