A declassified US intelligence report threw cold water on Republican conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots

• A US intelligence report released Tuesday debunked GOP conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots.
• Trump and Barr claimed foreign countries mass produced mail ballots to rig the 2020 election.
• “We have no indications that any foreign actor” engaged in such efforts, the report said.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

A newly declassified report from the US intelligence community shot down months of Republican conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the integrity of the electoral process.

Then-President Donald Trump and some of his allies made headlines in the run-up to the November general election by claiming, without evidence, that foreign adversaries were manipulating mail-in ballots.

But that theory was debunked by the US intelligence community, which said in its declassified report: “We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”

The determination flew in the face of Trump and his associates’ claims about foreign meddling with the voting process.

“There are a number of foreign countries that could easily make counterfeit ballots, put names on them, send them in,” and “it’d be very hard to sort out what’s happening,” then Attorney General William Barr told The New York Times last June.

It’s “one of the issues that I’m really worried about,” he said.

Days after Barr floated the theory, Trump jumped on the bandwagon.

“RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” he tweeted from an account that has since been permanently banned due to the risk of inciting violence.

Barr also doubled down on the conspiracy theory in a September interview with CNN.

“You’ve said you’re worried a foreign country could send thousands of fake ballots” to US voters, anchor Wolf Blitzer said to Barr. “What are you basing that on?”

“As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m basing that on logic,” the attorney general replied.

“Pardon?” Blitzer asked.

“Logic,” Barr said.

“But have you seen any evidence?” Blitzer pressed.

“No,” Barr responded.

Indeed, US officials ultimately did not uncover evidence to support the claim.

“We have no information or intelligence that any nation or state actor is engaging in any kind of activity to undermine any part of the mail-in vote or ballots,” a senior federal official told reporters last year.

Tuesday’s report from the ODNI also aligned with that finding.

“We assess that it would be difficult for a foreign actor to manipulate election processes at scale without detection by intelligence collection on the actors themselves, through physical and cyber security monitoring around voting systems across the country, or in post-election audits,” it said.

The report went on to say that the intelligence community “identified some successful compromises of state and local government networks prior to Election Day” and “a higher volume of unsuccessful attempts.” But those efforts, it added, “were not directed at altering election processes.”

That said, foreign actors like Iran and Russia “spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to undermine public confidence in election processes and results,” per the report.

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