[U.S. intelligence] officials said the Russian videos were part of the most active attempt by another country to tilt the 2024 election. They added that Russian government agencies and contractors, which generally seek to boost Republican former president Donald Trump’s campaign, are considering trying to instigate physical violence in the fraught period after voters cast their ballots.
“Some of these influence efforts are aimed at inciting violence and calling into question the validity of democracy as a political system, regardless of who wins,” a senior intelligence official told reporters in the latest of a series of background election-threat briefings. Russia is “potentially seeking to stoke threats towards poll workers, as well as amplifying protests and potentially encouraging protests to be violent,” the official added.
This was the first such briefing to raise the specter of violence, and the officials struck a tone of greater urgency in describing the disinformation challenges and their limited abilities to counteract them.
Why are our abilities' limited? President Biden can literally pull the plug on the internet. He can ban entire platforms such as Twitter, which Brazil did. Our abilities are limited only by our reluctance to use them. Biden said previously that he cannot "guarantee" an election free of violence should trumpie win. The president must guarantee no election violence.
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The intelligence officials drew special attention to the period between Nov. 5 and the Jan. 20 inauguration of the next president, noting that several countries stoked division in 2020 and were likely to again capitalize on objections to the vote-counting, congressional ratification and other steps in the process.
“Russia, Iran and China are better prepared to exploit opportunities in the post-Election Day period, in part because of the lessons drawn from the 2020 election cycle,” the senior official said.
Some of the required post-election procedures have tight timing, a vulnerability the officials said other countries might seek to exploit. Foreign adversaries could also claim fraud based on faked evidence or exaggerated conclusions from minor occurrences.
According to a recently declassified intelligence memo released Tuesday, Russian actors have already claimed that there may be voting fraud by immigrants, something officials from both major parties have not found at scale.
