In a declassified intelligence report released Tuesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says that Moscow viewed the prospect of Joe Biden’s election to the White House in 2020 as potentially disadvantageous to Russia’s interests and that drove their efforts to undermine his candidacy by helping then-president Donald Trump spread false allegations about Biden.
The assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says a network of Ukraine-linked individuals connected to the Kremlin perpetrated a 2020 misinformation campaign aimed a “denigrating” Biden similar to its 2016 efforts to undermine public confidence in the electoral process exacerbate sociopolitical divisions.
“Moscow’s range of influence actors uniformly worked to denigrate President Biden after his entrance into the race. Throughout the primaries and the general election campaign, Russian influence agents repeatedly spread … claims against Biden and his family’s alleged wrongdoing related to Ukraine.”
The report goes on to say that Moscow worked online to promote candidates it viewed as “outside what it perceives to be an anti-Russia political establishment”.
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After Biden had won the election, Moscow continued its covert influence campaign to question the result.
“We have high confidence in this assessment,” the report says.
