International adversaries, including Russia, tried to interfere in the 2020 election, with Russian efforts specifically aimed at undermining the campaign of President Joe Biden and boosting the chances of Donald Trump, CNN reports.
The report, an unclassified version from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concludes Russia’s efforts were targeted at “denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.”
There were few, if any, efforts to hack into US election systems in 2020 as there were in 2016, the report states, and no systems were successfully penetrated. There were “no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”
The report also notes that Iran attempted to interfere with the elections, while China largely sat out the election cycle.
“We assess that Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects-though without directly promoting his rivals-undermine public confidence in the electoral process and US institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the US,” it says.
“We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election,” it adds