Susan Rice said Thursday she is convinced Russia is interfering in the U.S. presidential election yet again, but this time posing an even greater risk.
Ms. Rice, who served under former President Barack Obama as his national security adviser at the time of the 2016 election, said with certainty Moscow is meddling in the 2020 contest.
Speaking during an event hosted by The Washington Post, Ms. Rice said she is “100% convinced that Russia is doing much of what it did in 2016 and certainly more.”
The intelligence community during the Obama administration found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in part to help President Trump, the Republican candidate in the race.
More recently, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed this month it assesses Russia is “using a range of measures” to denigrate Joseph R. Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee running against Mr. Trump in November’s election.
Ms. Rice, who also previously served as the Obama administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, noted Russia used several tactics in 2016 and is likely to do the same this year.
“We need to be worried about not only Russian disinformation – its activity on social media, which is constant, aimed at misleading and diving and instilling fear between and among Americans – but we need to be concerned also about what efforts it may make again to try to infiltrate our voting systems and corrupt either our voting rolls or even potentially the voting count itself,” said Ms. Rice. “That’s very hard to do and hopefully in the intervening years even more years have been taken to harden our systems. I believe in many cases that’s the case. But I also think the Russians aren’t going to stop trying.”
In addition to assessing Russia is actively targeting Mr. Biden, the ODNI said the U.S. intelligence community believes China and Iran want Mr. Trump to be voted out in November.
Moscow has repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. electoral process.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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