Mark Warner, Senate intel panel chair, says he’s withholding evidence of foreign vote meddling

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Mark R. Warner said quasi-allies are looking to interfere in the November election, but said he is declining to share details with voters.

Mr. Warner, Virginia Democrat, sounded an alarm about the prospective election interference in March, telling a cybersecurity gathering he had evidence he would not share about foreign countries’ activity.

Asked last month by The Washington Times to reveal who was interfering or to explain why he would not disclose details, Mr. Warner gave a disjointed answer about artificial intelligence tools and a country whose conduct remains hidden from public view.

“Nation states always try to find ways to influence other countries, the fact that they can, that you’ve got a whole new tool kit of information, tools, particularly AI tools, and for example one of the countries that’s had some, has taken some actions that would I think fit into that definition — I’m not even 100 % sure why it’s still classified,” Mr. Warner said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters in response to a question from The Times.

Mr. Warner then requested The Times ask his staff the following week and said if he hears things in classified settings, he will wait to share various information unless he gets a green light to do so.

Two weeks later, the Virginian senator’s staff replied to say it would not provide any detail.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have anything further to share on this for now,” said Valeria Rivadeneira, Mr. Warner’s spokeswoman, in an email.

Mr. Warner’s previous comments on election interference suggest more nations are interested in meddling than in recent elections past.

“Countries have learned — our adversaries and frankly, even some that are quasi-allies, because there are other countries that we’ve got evidence we can’t talk about of wanting to interfere — that this is remarkably effective and really cheap,” Mr. Warner said at a CrowdStrike summit in Washington in March.

Justifying his decision to publicly float an unnamed country’s unidentified election tampering without providing evidence, Mr. Warner told reporters in June he wanted people to understand the broad range of nefarious actions.

“What I was trying to make is, the point, that this has become so cheap and so easy if we simply think about this, it would be a mistake to think about this as just something that China, Iran, and Russia would use,” Mr. Warner told The Times.

Many nations have an interest in the outcome of elections in the U.S., but details on who wants a role in shaping the results are difficult to come by.

Intelligence officials told The Times last month that a wide range of actors see the coming elections as critical to their own interests, but the officials declined to identify any nonhostile countries looking to meddle.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said then the intelligence community would dig into instances where there is cause for concern. DNI officials told reporters that the intelligence community has identified more potential indications of foreign influence efforts than ever before.

Previous allegations of election interference and foreign influence have dogged presidential candidates. Former President Donald Trump faced years of accusations that he colluded with the Russian government to win in 2016, while President Biden has faced accusations over his interactions with officials from China and Ukraine predating his 2020 victory.

More recently, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in July her city’s major newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was guilty of “undue influence” on the upcoming election via its editorial board calling on Mr. Biden to step aside amid spreading concerns about his mental makeup.

But Mr. Warner, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has access to confidential information about foreign adversaries that a major city’s mayor does not. Formal accusations of undue influence on elections may therefore carry greater weight from Mr. Warner.

While Mr. Warner was mum on who would look to interfere in the coming election, he shared a bit more detail about how meddling in the 2024 election may look different to voters than in past years.

“We often think about misrepresenting a candidate, but you don’t need to have that, you have somebody who looks like they’re an election official tearing up a bunch of ballots,” Mr. Warner said at the June breakfast. “There are so many ways that we could have nefarious activities.”