The House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday voted to allow all House members to view classified intelligence that Democratic leaders provided to the FBI warning about a foreign “disinformation” campaign targeting the 2020 presidential election.
Last week, Democratic congressional leaders sent FBI Director Chris Wray a letter urging an FBI briefing to all lawmakers about the foreign interference efforts. Sources told CNN the Democrats’ classified addendum included concerns about a Russian-linked “disinformation” campaign to target former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, including that information from entities with ties to Russia was being provided to Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, who is leading an investigation into Biden.
Democrats have not publicly explained the material they shared with the FBI. The Intelligence Committee voted behind closed doors to make the classified addendum available to any House member who requests it. The vote was along party lines, with Republicans opposed, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
“Because the addendum is not public, today’s vote is no substitute for action by the Administration and intelligence community to more fully brief the American people on what foreign powers may be doing to influence the election and do so in real time,” House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said in a statement after Wednesday’s vote. “We must not have another presidential election marred by foreign interference when there was more we could do to prevent it, deter it and expose it to the American people.”
Republicans have dismissed the Democratic complaints as a partisan attack, and Johnson has denied receiving disinformation from foreigners.
“News reports regarding the alleged classified portion suggest that it continues to falsely accuse us of having received information from foreign nationals about former Vice President Joe Biden, including audio tapes,” Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said in a letter to Democrats last week.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Schiff – the four Democrats on the “Gang of Eight” that receives sensitive intelligence – sent the letter to the FBI last week urging a briefing to the full House and Senate.
In the letter to FBI Director Chris Wray, they warned of “a concerted foreign interference campaign which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November.”
House Intelligence Committee members were able to view the classified material last week, Schiff said. Senators have also been given access to the documents for review, according to a Senate aide.
Schiff told CNN on Wednesday that his committee does not intend to make public the classified material that House members can now view following Wednesday’s vote.
“We do think the IC (intelligence community) and the administration should brief the American people with much greater specificity, but no we don’t intend to release the documents,” Schiff said.
On Friday, the top US counterintelligence official came under fire from congressional Democrats after he issued a new warning about efforts by Russia, China and Iran to interfere in the upcoming presidential election. The statement in question came from Bill Evanina, the top official charged with briefing relevant stakeholders on current election security threats, who called out Russia, China and Iran for seeking to interfere in the American democratic process, an effort that includes targeting “the private communications of US political campaigns, candidates and other political targets.”
In a joint statement of their own Friday, the four Democratic leaders criticized Evanina, saying he did “not go nearly far enough in arming the American people with the knowledge they need about how foreign powers are seeking to influence our political process.”
Democrats also claimed that Evanina’s warning “gives a false sense of equivalence to the actions of foreign adversaries by listing three countries of unequal intent, motivation and capability together.”
Later Friday, an ODNI official pushed back on that criticism, telling CNN the statement “in no way downplays the election-related threats from Russia, which are very serious and which we have briefed to Congressional leaders repeatedly.”
