Director of National Intelligence informs Congressional committees it’ll no longer brief on election security
The official added that other agencies supporting election security, including the Department of Justice, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, intend to continue briefing Congress.
An ODNI official defended the move Saturday, telling CNN that Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe “is committed to meeting our statutory responsibilities and keeping Congress fully and currently informed.”
“For clarity and to protect sensitive intelligence from unauthorized disclosures, we will primarily do that through written finished intelligence products. We are concerned with unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information following recent briefings,” the official said.
Still, the abrupt announcement is a change of course that runs counter to the pledge of transparency and regular briefings on election threats by the intelligence community.
Intelligence officials have previously expressed frustration over information presented in classified sessions with congressional committees leaking to press but a shift to written briefings will undoubtedly limit lawmakers’ ability to ask questions of intelligence officials in real time.
“With a written release or a written report, you avoid the back-and-forth of questions, some of which could be quite probing. And I think, I think the DNI would like to avoid that and avoid the risk of saying something that might incur the wrath of the President,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Saturday.
“I think this is a terrible thing with respect to the need to inform the electorate about what foreign nations are doing to interfere in our political process, most notably the Russians,” added Clapper, a CNN contributor.
CNN has reached out to committee officials for comment.
Last month, the top intelligence official for election security, Bill Evanina, reiterated a commitment to providing “robust intelligence-based briefings on election security” to key stakeholders that include Congress, along with the political parties and presidential campaigns.
Earlier this month, Evanina released an unprecedented statement saying China “prefers” an outcome where President Donald Trump is not reelected in November and Russia is working to “denigrate” former Vice President Joe Biden’s White House bid.
“We assess that China prefers that President Trump — whom Beijing sees as unpredictable — does not win reelection,” he wrote. “China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests, and deflect and counter criticism of China.”
“We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment.’ This is consistent with Moscow’s public criticism of him when he was Vice President for his role in the Obama Administration’s policies on Ukraine and its support for the anti-Putin opposition inside Russia,” Evanina added.
Evanina also stated that Iran is seeking to “undermine US democratic institutions, President Trump, and to divide the country.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff said Evanina’s statement improved on the previous warning about foreign election interference he issued in July, but “still treats three actors of differing intent and capability as equal threats to our democratic elections.”
In a joint statement issued at the time, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sens. Marco Rubio and Mark Warner, thanked Evanina for providing the additional information about the threats and encouraged the intelligence community to “continue to make this information available.”
US officials charged with protecting the 2020 election also said last week that they have “no information or intelligence” foreign countries, including Russia, are attempting to undermine any part of the mail-in voting process, contradicting Trump, who has repeatedly pushed false claims that foreign adversaries are targeting mail ballots as part of a “rigged” presidential race.
Specifically, a senior intelligence official discounted the possibility of foreign actors mass producing fake ballots to interfere in the November elections, again breaking with Trump who has continued to insist that mail-in voting poses a significant threat to election security.
“We have no information or intelligence that any nation state threat actor is engaging in activity … to undermine any part of the mail-in vote or ballots,” the official told reporters on Wednesday.
This story has been updated with additional reporting and background information.
