US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe warned Americans that Iran and Russia are trying to interfere in the presidential election by putting pressure on voters. Bloomberg reports on this on Wednesday, October 21.
“We would like to warn the public. We have determined that two foreign actors – Iran and Russia – have taken concrete actions to influence public opinion in connection with our elections, ”he said at a press conference.
According to the chief of American intelligence, Iran and separately from it Russia “received some information about voter registration.”
Ratcliffe also noted that “this data could be used by foreign actors to try to communicate information to registered voters that they hope will create doubt, wreak havoc and undermine your confidence in our elections.”
In conclusion, he appealed to the Americans with an appeal “not to allow these efforts to bring the desired effect.”
On October 19, US Assistant Secretary of Justice John Demers, who oversees national security issues, said that the United States had not identified any attempts to influence the process of summing up the results of the November elections from abroad. He devoted his speech to absentee accusations by US prosecutors against six alleged Russian military intelligence officers. Therefore, Demers was asked whether the military intelligence of Russia, in the opinion of the US intelligence services, was making active attempts to influence the summing up of the results of the upcoming US elections in November.
The next US general election will be held on November 3. They will elect the president and vice president, all 435 members of the House of Representatives and a third of the US Senate, governors of 13 states and territories. Republican Donald Trump’s rival in the presidential election will be Democrat Joseph Biden.
Interference in the American electoral process in 2016 is accused by the US intelligence of Russia. Special attorney Robert Mueller was investigating these alleged attempts. He concluded that there was no collusion between the Russian authorities and Trump in 2016.
Earlier, the United States accused six Russians of hacking involved in hacker attacks on the infrastructure of the 2018 Winter Olympics and the 2017 French presidential election. In the United States, it is believed that the suspects carried out hacker attacks on behalf of the Russian government to destabilize the situation in other states, interfere in domestic politics and cause financial damage.