Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a conference with members of the federal government in Moscow, Russia, on February 5, 2020.
Aleksey Nikolskyi | Sputnik | Kremlin | Reuters
Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, licensed intelligence possessions to promote false information throughout the 2020 election cycle about Joe Biden through U.S. media and individuals near to then-President Donald Trump to attempt to improve Trump’s reelection opportunities, a U.S. intelligence report stated.
In specific, the declassified report, launched Tuesday, stated that Putin “had purview over the activities of Adriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator who played a prominent role in Russia’s election influence activities.”
Derkach, who has ties to Russian intelligence, is understood to have actually consulted with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s individual legal representative, who for months promoted rejected accusations versus Biden, now president, and his kid Hunter Biden.
The findings are detailed as the 2nd “key judgment” of the report, “Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections,” by the National Intelligence Council.
“A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of people linked to Russian intelligence to launder influence narratives including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden through US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, some of whom were close to former President Trump and his administration,” the report stated.
A White House authorities, when inquired about the report Tuesday, informed NBC News, that Biden, from his very first phone with Putin, “has been clear that the United States will respond to a number of destabilizing Russian actions, including the SolarWinds hack, reports of Russia placing bounties on United States soldiers in Afghanistan, interference in the 2020 United States election, and the poisoning of Aleksey Navalny.”
“You’ve already seen us take a number of actions in response to Russia’s use of a chemical weapon in the attempted murder of Alexey Navalny,” the authorities stated. “There will be more soon.”
The intelligence report points straight at Putin, stating that the Russian leader and “other senior Russian officials were aware of and probably directed Russia’s influence operations against the 2020 Presidential election.”
The report stated that Russian intelligence services, and individuals in Ukraine who had ties to those services, declared that there were “corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and other US officials and Ukraine.”
“Russian intelligence services relied on Ukraine-linked proxies and these proxies’ networks — including their US contacts — to spread this narrative to give Moscow plausible deniability of their involvement,” the report stated.
“We assess that the goals of this effort went beyond the US presidential campaign to include reducing the Trump administration’s support for Ukraine. As the US presidential election neared, Moscow placed increasing emphasis on undermining the candidate it saw as most detrimental to its global interests.”
The report stated, “A network of Ukraine-linked individuals including Russian influence agent Konstantin Kilimnik — who were also connected to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) took steps throughout the election cycle to damage US ties to Ukraine, denigrate President Biden and his candidacy, and benefit former President Trump’s prospects for reelection.”
“We assess this network also sought to discredit the Obama administration by emphasizing accusations of corruption by US officials, and to falsely blame Ukraine for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election.”
Kilimnik, who was an essential partner of Paul Manafort, the disgraced Republican expert who at one point ran Trump’s 2016 project, was determined last summer season by the Senate Intelligence Committee as a Russian intelligence officer who might have assisted collaborate the hacking and dripping of Democratic e-mails in 2016.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., stated Tuesday, “The Intelligence Community Assessment released today underscores what we all knew already – that Russia interfered to support former President Trump, hurt President Biden, and undermine confidence in our electoral process.”
“Through proxies, Russia ran a successful intelligence operation that penetrated the former president’s inner circle,” Schiff stated. “Individuals close to the former president were targeted by agents of Russian intelligence including Andriy Derkach and Konstantin Kilimnik, who laundered misinformation into our political system, with the intent of denigrating now-President Biden and damaging his candidacy.”
