President Donald Trump’s top intelligence adviser said Russia, China and Iran tried to influence the November midterm elections but didn’t compromise infrastructure to tamper with vote counts.
“Russia, and other foreign countries, including China and Iran, conducted influence activities and messaging campaigns targeted at the United States to promote their strategic interests,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a statement Friday, following a review of the election by his office.
Trump had ordered Coats’s office to conduct a review within 45 days of the Nov. 6 election amid calls for the president to respond more forcefully to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. The report, delivered to the White House on Friday, wasn’t released to the public.
The intelligence community didn’t find evidence that the election infrastructure had been breached in a way that could’ve prevented voting, changed vote counts or disrupted the ability to tally votes, Coats said. The Justice and Homeland Security departments have 45 days under the executive order to review the findings and respond with recommendations.
