Former US vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, said he is putting Russia and other foreign governments “on notice” that he would act aggressively as president to counter any interference in US elections.
The statement came hours after Democratic leaders issued a new warning that the US Congress appears to be the target of a foreign interference campaign.
Biden said in a statement on Monday that he would treat foreign interference as “an adversarial act that significantly affects the relationship between the United States and the interfering nation’s government.”
Photo: Reuters
He criticized US President Donald Trump for not doing enough in response to US intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
“If any foreign power recklessly chooses to interfere in our democracy, I will not hesitate to respond as president to impose substantial and lasting costs,” Biden said.
The new alarms give a renewed urgency to concerns that foreign actors could be trying to influence the vote or sow disinformation.
Biden last week said that he had begun receiving intelligence briefings and warned that Russia, China and other adversaries were attempting to undermine the presidential election.
Biden gave no evidence, but he said that Russia was “still engaged” after 2016 and that China was also involved in efforts to sow doubts in the US electoral process.
During an online fundraiser on Monday night, Biden added: “It’s going to be tough, there’s not much I can do about it now except talk about it, and expose it, but it is a serious concern. It is truly a violation of our sovereignty.”
The Democratic leaders on Monday said in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that they are concerned that Congress appears to be the target of a “concerted foreign interference campaign” to influence the election.
They asked Wray for an all-members, classified briefing on the matter before next month’s annual recess.
The letter from US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and the top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees contains no details about the threats, though they describe them as serious and specific.
“We are gravely concerned, in particular, that Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November,” wrote Pelosi, Schumer, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence panel.
A congressional official familiar with the letter said that there was a classified addendum “to ensure a clear and unambiguous record of the counterintelligence threats of concern.”
While the Democrats’ exact concerns were unclear, there have been worries since Trump was elected that Russia’s efforts to sow US chaos are ongoing in this year’s election.
The 2016 effort included hacking of Democratic e-mail accounts during the campaign by Russian military intelligence officials and the subsequent disclosure by WikiLeaks. Russians also used a covert social media campaign to spread misinformation and posts aimed at dividing public opinion.
Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, on Monday she was “glad” Biden was speaking up.
“It’s very clear that Russia succeeded,” she told MSNBC. “They believed that they were able to influence the minds and even the votes of Americans, so why would they stop?”
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