US officials: No signs of foreign targeting of mail-in vote
WASHINGTON – U.S. officials said Wednesday there has been no intelligence to suggest that foreign countries are working to undermine mail-in voting and no signs of any coordinated effort to commit widespread fraud through the vote-by-mail process, despite numerous claims made by President Donald Trump in recent months.
The officials at multiple federal agencies stopped short of directly contradicting Trump, but their comments made it clear they had not seen evidence to support the president's statements that fraud will be rampant in the upcoming election and the expected surge in mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic leaves November's presidential election especially vulnerable to foreign interference.
Trump, for instance, tweeted July 30 that mail-in voting was proving to be a “catastrophic disaster” and added: “The Dems talk of foreign influence in voting, but they know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there's no accurate count!”
But a senior official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, asked on a conference call with reporters Wednesday about the threat of foreign countries manufacturing ballots or amplifying disinformation about the integrity of the vote-by-mail process, said there was no information or intelligence that any adversary was “engaged in any kind of activity to undermine any part of the mail-in vote.”
A senior FBI official said officials had not seen to date a coordinated, nationwide effort to corrupt mail-in voting. The official also said that, given the diffuse and varied election systems across the country, it would be “extraordinarily difficult” to tamper with results in a measurable way. But the official said the FBI remained committed to investigating fraud that emerges.
The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Three of the main agencies tasked with countering threats to America's voting system arranged the briefing at a critical time in the electoral process, with little over two months left before Election Day and mail-in voting starting in weeks. Trump has made unsubstantiated claims that the election will be marred by fraud and is refusing to commit to accepting the results.