There’s No Evidence Supporting Trump’s Mail Ballot Warnings, FBI Says

Enlarge this image


President Donald Trump arrives to the Rose Garden of the White House during the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.





Michael Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images



hide caption



toggle caption


Michael Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images



Politics
Louis DeJoy Vows Post Office Can Handle Mail-In Ballots, In Senate Hearing

Trump and Barr have said they think foreign countries could attempt to counterfeit ballots and send them in to interfere with counting and that mail voting expansions will be «ripe with fraud and a way for Democrats to «steal the election from the Republicans.

But national security officials rejected those theories in the Wednesday briefing, saying they have not seen a coordinated fraud effort and noting how difficult such an effort would be, considering the decentralized nature of U.S. elections.

The national security officials briefed reporters on the condition they not be identified.

State and local elections officials also have affirmed the level of difficulty required with such a scheme, saying often that bad information around the use of mailed ballots is more of an issue than fraud.

When asked directly about Trump’s claims around foreign countries forging or counterfeiting ballots, an FBI official said Wednesday the agency has «no information about any nation state engaging in any effort to undermine any aspect of mail voting.



2020 Election: Secure Your Vote
Trump, While Attacking Mail Voting, Casts Mail Ballot Again

Intelligence officials did continue to warn however, that a number of foreign countries, including Russia, China, and Iran, continue to engage in overt and covert influence operations aimed at the 2020 presidential race.

Although the mail-in ballot interference thesis isn’t supported by evidence, national security officials say, the foreign governments are attempting to sow chaos among American voters; launch cyberattacks and take other actions aimed at interceding in this year’s election.

The degrees of danger posed by those actors is debated; Democrats, for example, argue that the intelligence community is abetting Trump’s desire to muddy the waters by creating a false equivalence in associating lesser efforts by China and Iran with what they argue are the much more serious ones by Russia.

A former top U.S. spymaster, Sue Gordon, told NPR she would put the Russians «first on the list.



Life Kit
The Most Important Mail You’ll Ever Send: A Ballot

The federal officials also were set to convene a classified threat landscape briefing for election officials on Wednesday afternoon.