Wray: Russia 'very active' in efforts to influence election, 'denigrate' Biden

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Inside China, Iran and Russia’s election meddling efforts

Insight from retired Gen. Jack Keane on ‘Fox News @ Night.’

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the House Homeland Security Committee Thursday, detailing a number of domestic and foreign threats presently facing the nation, notably including the continued threat of Russian election interference.

Wray told the committee that while he has not seen the same level of interference by the Kremlin as in 2016,  there is evidence that Russia has been “very active” in its interference efforts, and that it appears to favor President Trump.

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“The intelligence community’s consensus is that Russia continues to try to influence our elections primarily through what we would call malign foreign influence,” Wray said, “as opposed to what we saw in 2016 where there was also an effort to target election infrastructure – you know, cyber-target.”

A 2019 Senate Intelligence Committee report revealed that there was evidence that Russia targeted election infrastructure in every state going into the 2016 election but said no votes were altered.

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“We have not seen that second part yet this year or this cycle,” Wray continued, “but we certainly have seen very active — very active — efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020 through what I would call more the malign foreign influence side of things: social media, use of proxies, state media, online journal, etc., in effort to both sow divisiveness and discord and – and I think the intelligence community has assessed this publicly — primarily to denigrate Vice President Biden and what the Russians see is kind of an anti-Russian establishment.”

Russia is not the only known foreign threat when it comes to election interference. The intelligence community has warned that Iran wants to “undermine” Trump. Officials also said that China “prefers” that Trump “does not win reelection” in November.

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Bejing prefers a Trump loss because Chinese officials view him as unpredictable, said Bill Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. China has been expanding its attempt to influence the general election and shape U.S. policy by pressuring political figures Chinese officials view as opposed to China's interests, he said.