Intel Officials ‘Far More Concerned’ About Russia Than Iran As Election Threat

In what looks like a direct rebuke to Trump’s loyalist Director of National Intelligence, “many” intelligence officials have told The New York Times that Russia helping Trump, not Iran opposing him, is the serious threat to our elections process.
By NewsHound Ellen — October 23, 2020

Wednesday, the unqualified Trumper who is the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, made a bizarre appearance in which he suggested – but never actually stated – that Iran is behind a barrage of emails, purportedly from the Trump-allied Proud Boys, telling Democrats to vote for Trump “or we will come after you.” Ratcliffe also made the bizarre claim that those pro-Trump emails were sent in an effort to “damage President Trump.” Sen. Charles Schumer and other Democrats are not buying it.

The timing of Ratcliffe’s gobbledygook of an announcement is suspicious, too. It came shortly after former President Barack Obama delivered a stemwinder against Donald Trump in a campaign speech for Biden/Harris. Timed to distract from Obama by the Obama-obsessed Trump administration? I report, you decide.

New reporting by The New York Times suggests that legit intel officials are concerned about Ratcliffe putting too much blame on Iran and not enough on Russian efforts to help Trump:

While senior Trump administration officials said this week that Iran has been actively interfering in the presidential election, many intelligence officials said they remained far more concerned about Russia, which has in recent days hacked into state and local computer networks in breaches that could allow Moscow broader access to American voting infrastructure.

The discovery of the hacks came as American intelligence agencies, infiltrating Russian networks themselves, have pieced together details of what they believe are Russia’s plans to interfere in the presidential race in its final days or immediately after the election on Nov. 3.

Officials did not make clear what Russia planned to do, but they said its operations would be intended to help President Trump, potentially by exacerbating disputes around the results, especially if the race is too close to call.

The Times noted that the officials said Ratcliffe “had accurately summarized the preliminary conclusion about Iran” but that “One official compared the Iranian action to single-A baseball, while the Russians are major leaguers.”

It turns out that the Trump administration has known for weeks that Russia hacked into elections systems. From NBC News:

In a technical alert issued Thursday, the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that hackers working for the Russian government had successfully broken into several local government networks, and as of the beginning of October, had stolen data from at least two of them. In at least one instance, the hackers were able to crawl across the victim’s computer network to access a wide array of information, including how to reset passwords and print ID badges.

In other words, this:

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