NEWS
ANALYSIS
Tuesday’s Debate Made Clear the Gravest Threat to
the Election: The President Himself
President Trump’s unwillingness to say he would abide
by the result, and his disinformation campaign about election fraud went beyond
anything President Vladimir V. Putin could have imagined.
David E.
Sanger
By David E.
Sanger
Sept. 30,
2020
Updated
1:52 p.m. ET
President
Trump’s angry insistence in the last minutes of Tuesday’s debate that there was
no way the presidential election could be conducted without fraud amounted to
an extraordinary declaration by a sitting American president that he would try
to throw any outcome into the courts, Congress or the streets if he was not
re-elected.
His comments
came after four years of debate about the possibility of foreign interference
in the 2020 election and how to counter such disruptions. But they were a stark
reminder that the most direct threat to the electoral process now comes from
the president of the United States himself.
His
unwillingness to say he would abide by the result, and his disinformation
campaign about the integrity of the American electoral system, went beyond
anything President Vladimir V. Putin could have imagined. All Mr. Putin has to
do now is amplify the president’s message, which the Russian leader has already
begun to do.
Everything
Mr. Trump said in his face-off with Joseph Biden Jr. he had already delivered
in recent weeks, in tweets and rallies with his faithful. But he had never
before put it all together in front of such a large audience as he did Tuesday
night.
He began
the debate with a declaration that balloting already underway was “a fraud and
a shame” and proof of “a rigged election.”
It quickly
became apparent that the president was doing more than simply trying to
discredit the mail-in ballots that are being used to ensure voters are not
disenfranchised by a pandemic — the same way of voting that five states have
used with minimal fraud, for years.
He followed
it by encouraging his supporters to “go into the polls” and “watch very
carefully,” which seemed to be code words for a campaign of voter intimidation,
aimed at those who brave the coronavirus risks of voting in person.
And his
declaration that the Supreme Court would have to “look at the ballots” and that
“we might not know for months, because these ballots are going to be all over”
seemed to suggest that he will try to place the election in the hands of a
court where he has been rushing to cement a conservative majority with his
nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
And if he
cannot win there, he has already raised the possibility of using the argument
of a fraudulent election to throw the decision to the House of Representatives,
where he believes he has an edge, since every state delegation gets one vote in
resolving an election with no clear winner. At least for now, 26 of those
delegations have a majority of Republican representatives.
Taken
together, his attacks on the integrity of the coming election suggested that a
country that has successfully run presidential elections since 1788 (a messy
first experiment, which stretched just under a month), through civil wars,
world wars and natural disasters now faces the gravest challenge in its history
to the way it chooses a leader and peacefully transfers power.
“We have
never heard a president deliberately cast doubt on an election’s integrity this
way a month before it happened,’’ said Michael Beschloss, the presidential
historian and author of “Presidents of War.” “This is the kind of thing we have
preached to other countries that they should not do. It reeks of autocracy, not
democracy.”
But what
worried American intelligence and homeland security officials, who have been
assuring the public for months now that an accurate, secure vote could happen,
was that Mr. Trump’s rant about a fraudulent vote may have been intended for
more than just a domestic audience.
They have
been worried for some time that his warnings are a signal to outside powers —
chiefly the Russians — for their disinformation campaign, which has seized on
his baseless theme that the mail-in ballots are ridden with fraud. But what
concerns them the most is that over the next 34 days, the country may begin to
see disruptive cyberoperations, especially ransomware, intended to create just
enough chaos to prove the president’s point.
Those who
studied the 2016 election have seen this coming for a long while, and warned
about the risk. The Republicans who led Senate Intelligence Committee’s final
report on that election included a clear warning.
“Sitting
officials and candidates should use the absolute greatest amount of restraint
and caution if they are considering publicly calling the validity of an
upcoming election into question,” the report said, noting that doing so would
only be “exacerbating the already damaging messaging efforts of foreign
intelligence services.”
That has
happened already. Representative Adam Schiff, the Democrat who chairs the House
Intelligence Committee, said in a recent interview he had asked the
intelligence agencies he oversees to look for examples of the Russians picking
up on Mr. Trump’s words.
“Sure
enough, it wasn’t long before the intelligence community started seeing exactly
that,” Mr. Schiff said. “It was too enticing and predictable an option for the
Russians. They have been amplifying Trump’s false attacks on absentee voting.”
What is
striking is how Mr. Trump’s fundamental assessment that the election would be
fraudulent differed so sharply from that of some of the officials he has
appointed. It was only last week that the director of the F.B.I., Christopher
Wray, said his agency had “not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated
national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or
otherwise.”
Mr. Wray
was immediately attacked by the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. “With
all due respect to Director Wray, he has a hard time finding emails in his own
F.B.I.”
Mr. Trump
himself has provided no evidence to back up his assertions, apart from citing a
handful of Pennsylvania ballots discarded in a dumpster — and immediately
tracked down, and counted, by election officials.
Meanwhile,
the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. have been issuing warnings,
as recently as 24 hours before the debate, about the dangers of disinformation
in what could be the tumultuous time after the election.
“During the
2020 election season, foreign actors and cybercriminals are spreading false and
inconsistent information through various online platforms in an attempt to
manipulate public opinion, discredit the electoral process and undermine
confidence in U.S. democratic institutions,” the agencies wrote in a joint
public service announcement.
It detailed
the kind of data that could be leaked — mostly voter registration details — and
said they “have no information suggesting any cyberattack on U.S. election
infrastructure has prevented an election from occurring, compromised the
accuracy of voter registration information, prevented a registered voter from
casting a ballot, or compromised the integrity of any ballots cast.”
When
officials involved in those public service announcements were asked whether Mr.
Trump had different information, which would explain his repeated attacks on
the election system, they went silent.
They had
little choice. It was apparent to them that the chief disinformation source was
their boss. And for that, they had no playbook.
David E.
Sanger is a national security correspondent. In a 36-year reporting career for
The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most
recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect
Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” @SangerNYT • Facebook
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