Last Updated on January 17, 2021
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe wrote a letter to Congress on January 7 confirming China’s interference in the 2020 US election.
The DNI assessment alleged that information relating to Chinese election interference was concealed by high level officials at the Central Intelligence Agency.
In the letter, it was revealed that these analysts would not refer to China’s actions as election interference because they did not support President Donald Trump’s policies.
The DNI cited a report by the Intelligence Community Analytic Ombudsman Barry Zulauf, that included “concerning revelations about the politicization of China election interference reporting and of undue pressure being brought to bear on analysts who offered an alternative view based on the intelligence.”
The China reporting issues outlined in the letter are “illustrative of broader concerns” according to DNI Ratcliffe. “It is important for all IC leaders to foster a culture within the Community that encourages dissenting views that are supported by the intelligence.”
“China analysts were hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the administrations policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.”
Furthermore, DNI Ratcliffe asserted that “alternative viewpoints” on Chinese election interference efforts “have not been appropriately tolerated, much less encouraged.”
He cited the Ombudsman report, which said there “were strong efforts to suppress analysis of alternatives” and that CIA officials “rejected NIC coordination comments and tried to downplay alternative analyses” in regards to Chinese election interference.
“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,” said DNI Ratcliffe.
Now that it has been made clear that China interfered in the 2020 election, these developments could provide President Trump with more justification to uphold his Constitutional duty to protect the integrity of US elections from foreign interference, under the framework of his 2018 Executive Order, as National File reported:
“His only option in order to be able to defend the Constitution is to activate the Emergency Alert System, to be able to convey his message to the American people across television, radio, internet, and phones, since he’s being banned on everything. In that message he needs to lay out the case to America that we are being attacked by foreign adversaries, particularly China, in terms of cyber. There’s also a Russian and Iranian component. I’m saying this with a high degree of confidence, based on all the reporting that I’ve seen, and it’s all unclassified,” said Raiklin.
“He needs to lay out the case of a foreign attack based on national security grounds, which is what you’d usually use the EAS system for, and articulate that under the framework of Executive Order 13848.”
The Washington Examiner published DNI Ratcliffe’s letter to Congress on January 17, ten days after Vice President Mike Pence and Congress unconstitutionally certified the fraudulent results of the electoral college.
