Justice department official calls election meddling a ‘clear and present danger’
The Justice Department’s top national security official warned Thursday that foreign interference in the 2024 election posed a “clear and present danger” and said that Russia was ramping up its disinformation efforts in hopes of helping former President Donald Trump.
Matthew G. Olsen, the head of the department’s national security division, cited Iran’s recent hacking of the Trump campaign as evidence that some adversaries were also seeking to damage Trump’s chances of victory, though Iran tried, unsuccessfully, to hack Democratic campaigns as well.
Olsen, amplifying warnings issued by the U.S. intelligence community and senior FBI officials, did not suggest that Trump or any of his associates were working with overseas actors. He also identified North Korea and China as countries posing serious threats to the election.
But Olsen singled out efforts by President Vladimir Putin of Russia to influence U.S. elections by bankrolling right-wing influencers and impersonating legitimate news sites with the intertwined objectives of bolstering Trump and degrading U.S. support for Ukraine.
Olsen’s remarks, which came less than two months before Election Day, follow the indictment last week of two employees of the Kremlin-controlled media organization RT. The employees were accused of providing financial backing to a U.S. company that disseminated content favored by Russia, including pro-Trump commentary and pieces sympathetic to Russia’s position on Ukraine.
“Russia is using its state-run media and other entities to covertly push for its preferred election outcomes, seeking to influence voter preferences in favor of the former president and to diminish the prospects of the vice president,” Olsen said in a speech at Columbia Law School, referring to Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“These adversaries are also focused on trying to shape voter preference for one candidate or the other — choosing sides in our elections to promote or denigrate a candidate or party,” he added. “Or they simply seek to cast doubt on the electoral process.”
Olsen, speaking later in the day on a panel on political violence near the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan, called the foreign election threats “a clear and present danger to our democracy.”
In recent days, officials with the Justice Department, the FBI and intelligence agencies have warned that the threat of foreign interference was greater than in previous cycles because of the increasing sophistication of hacking techniques, social media, disinformation and artificial intelligence.
The Iran spear phishing attack that affected the Trump campaign was part of a larger, far-reaching effort by the country to hack into political accounts. It is not clear whether that attack, which targeted a top political adviser, represented Iran’s preference to elect Harris.
No one has yet been indicted in the hacking case, though prosecutors could bring charges soon, according to two people familiar with the situation.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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