Foreign efforts to undermine US election
ABC News Chief Justice correspondent Pierre Thomas said Russia appears to be "seeking direct access" to American voters to sow division and unrest.
Senior national security officials alerted the American public Wednesday that Iran and Russia have both obtained voter data in their efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election.
Thomas said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that those efforts appear to be aimed at creating problems before the election and possibly just after Election Day "if we don't quickly know a result."
On Friday, U.S. officials told ABC News that systems containing election-related information from two counties in two separate states were successfully hacked by the Russian effort. While the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have seen no evidence that data has been altered, FBI and Homeland Security officials expressed concern that Russia "may be seeking access to obtain future disruption options, to influence U.S. policies and actions, or to delegitimize SLTT government entities."
Iran is "aggressively pursuing the same goal," Thomas said Sunday.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said Wednesday that Iran was separately behind a series of threatening emails that were found to be sent this week to Democratic voters, which he said was "designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President Trump."
Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for the Iranian Mission to the U.N., denied the allegations to ABC News.