WASHINGTON -- The government of China prefers that President Donald Trump not win reelection in November, seeing the incumbent as "unpredictable," and Russia is using a range of measures to try to "denigrate" former Vice President Joe Biden, including selective leaks of information and efforts on social media, a top U.S. intelligence official said in a statement Friday.
The statement by William Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, was notable for identifying three countries seeking to influence the 2020 election -- China, Russia and Iran. But he portrayed Russia as the most active source of interference.
It also links Moscow's disapproval of Biden to his role in shaping Obama administration policies supporting Ukraine, an important U.S. ally, and opposing Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Trump has made claims that Biden's actions in Ukraine were intended to help the business interests of his son, Hunter, who was paid a high salary to serve on the board of energy company Burisma.
Evanina's statement, three months before the election, comes amid criticism from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional Democrats that the intelligence community has been withholding from the public specific intelligence information about the threat of foreign interference in American politics.
The latest intelligence assessment warns that hostile foreign actors may seek to compromise election infrastructure, interfere with the voting process or call into question voting results. Despite those efforts, officials see it as unlikely that anyone could manipulate voting results in any meaningful way, Evanina said.
"Many foreign actors have a preference for who wins the election, which they express through a range of overt and private statements; covert influence efforts are rarer," said Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence Security Center. "We are primarily concerned about the ongoing and potential activity by China, Russia and Iran."
Another U.S. official said that it would be misleading to compare Russia and China's efforts as parallel in scope. China sees the U.S. as an adversary but takes a longer-term, strategic approach that, so far, doesn't include the kinds of short-term efforts to wound a political candidate, the official said.
"China has been expanding its influence efforts" ahead of the vote in November, pressuring political figures it sees as opposed to its interest and trying to "deflect and counter criticism of China," Evanina said in his statement.
Concerns about election interference are especially acute following an effort by Russia to meddle in the 2016 election through both the hacking of Democratic emails and a covert social media campaign aimed at sowing discord among U.S. voters.
The White House responded to Friday's news with a statement saying "the United States will not tolerate foreign interference in our electoral processes and will respond to malicious foreign threats that target our democratic institutions."
"The United States is working to identify and disrupt foreign influence efforts targeting our political system, including efforts designed to suppress voter turnout or undermine public confidence in the integrity of our elections," said the statement from National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot.
In a separate statement, the Trump campaign said it didn't want or need foreign assistance and said China and Iran were opposed to Trump because "he has held them accountable after years of coddling by politicians like Joe Biden."
Democrats in Congress who have participated in recent classified briefings on the election interference threat have expressed alarm at what they have heard. They have urged the U.S. intelligence community to make public some of their concerns, in part to avoid a repeat of 2016, when Obama administration officials were seen as slow and overly deliberate in their public discussion of active Russian measures in that year's election.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, said in a statement Friday that they were "pleased that Mr. Evanina heeded our call to make additional details public about Russia's malign interference campaign." But they also criticized him for naming Iran and China "as equal threats to our democratic elections."
Pelosi and Schiff called for the intelligence community to release "specific information that would allow voters to appraise for themselves the respective threats posed by these foreign actors, and distinguish these actors' different and unequal aims, current actions, and capabilities."
A bipartisan congressional report released by the Senate intelligence committee earlier this year said the Obama administration was ill-prepared to handle the interference and failed to respond effectively as officials feared getting caught up in a heavily politicized environment and undermining the election.
Information for this article was contributed by Eric Tucker, Deb Riechmann, Jonathan Lemire and Frank Bajak of The Associated Press; and by Shane Harris and Rosalind S. Helderman of The Washington Post.
