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Though officials say an ongoing second Trump administration investigation has found no evidence yet that vote-counting machines themselves were directly compromised in the 2020 election, the memo also shows how such machines could be vulnerable to intrusions in the future and made clear that the voter registration databases that were breached by China and Iran were easy targets.
The ODNI had released a March 2021 assessment in which agencies unanimously agreed Russia sought to hurt then-candidate Biden while Iran worked to harm then-President Trump in 2020 — but the agencies did not reach unanimity on China. The majority argued China didn’t try to influence the election against Trump, while a minority dissent contended that’s exactly what Beijing did.
Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who is now Trump’s CIA director, revealed in early January 2021 that he had found evidence about the politicization of China election influence analysis inside the IC and of undue pressure being brought to bear against the analysts who had assessed that China had worked to stop Trump from being reelected.
The intelligence report was titled“Chinese Government Production and Export of Fraudulent US Driver's Licenses to Chinese Sympathizers in the United States, in Order to Create Tens of Thousands of Fraudulent Mail-in Votes for US Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, in late August 2020.” That report was soon recalled in 2020, with spy agencies told to delete the information before they had a chance to properly investigate its claims.
Bombshell revelations about alleged Chinese election meddling — and the politicized suppression of analyses pointing to Beijing trying to hurt Trump in 2020 — were made public on January 7, 2021.
Barry Zulauf, an analytic ombudsman and longtime intelligence official, issued a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee where he noted, among many things, that some analysts appeared to hold back information on Chinese efforts because they disagreed with the Trump administration’s policies.
“Given analytic differences in the way Russia and China analysts examined their targets, China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. The analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies,” Zulauf wrote.
China analysts balk at “that vulgarian in the Oval Office”
Just the News reported thatZulauf later revealed that analysts said they didn’t want their intel used by “that vulgarian in the Oval Office”to pursue policies toward China they personally disagreed with.
Ratcliffe signed an unclassified letter in January 2021 contending that “from my unique vantage point as the individual who consumes all of the U.S. government’s most sensitive intelligence on the People’s Republic of China, I do not believe the majority view expressed by the Intelligence Community analysts fully and accurately reflects the scope of the Chinese government’s efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections.”
The ombudsman's report, Ratcliffe contended, “includes concerning revelations about the politicization of China election influence reporting and of undue pressure being brought to bear on analysts who offered an alternative view based on the intelligence.”
Zulauf said that “due to varying collection and insight into hostile state actors’ leadership intentions on domestic influence campaigns, the definitional use of the terms ‘influence’ and ‘interference’ and associated confidence levels are applied differently by the China and Russia analytic communities.” In his January 2021 letter, Ratcliffe said that “similar actions by Russia and China are assessed and communicated to policymakers differently, potentially leading to the false impression that Russia sought to influence the election, but China did not.”
The ombudsman also revealed two national intelligence officers wrote an “NIC alternative analysis memo” in October 2020 “which expressed alternative views on potential Chinese election influence activities.” Zulauf said that “these alternative views met with considerable organizational counter pressure.”
“I am adding my voice in support of the stated minority view — based on all available sources of intelligence, with definitions consistently applied, and reached independent of political considerations or undue pressure — that the People’s Republic of China sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections,” Ratcliffe said in January 2021.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/dni-gabbard-uncovered-evidence-congress-and-trump-misled-china-and