US intelligence officials reportedly believe the Kremlin is attempting to manipulate both sides of the upcoming presidential election — boosting Bernie Sanders and President Trump.
The cascade of revelations reached a fever pitch on Friday as Trump heatedly disputed the assessment that Russia was helping him, and The Washington Post reported that officials told Sanders about the Kremlin’s support for him in this year’s hotly contested Democratic primary.
The broadsheet’s sources did not specify how Moscow is interfering in favor of the Vermont senator, who has surged into the lead.
“The intelligence community is telling us they are interfering in this campaign right now, in 2020,” Sanders told reporters in California just after the story broke. “I say to Mr. Putin, if elected president, trust me, you are not going to be interfering in American elections.”
Sanders said he was briefed about the Kremlin’s attempts to intervene in the 2020 election last month and questioned the timing of the story, which broke the day before Nevada voters caucus.
“Why do you think it came out?” Sanders sarcastically asked. “It’s The Washington Post? Good friends.”
The news came hours after Trump denounced an intelligence-community assessment reportedly provided to the congressional intelligence committees last week that Russia wants to boost his reelection.
“Another misinformation campaign is being launched by Democrats in Congress saying that Russia prefers me to any of the Do Nothing Democrat candidates who still have been unable to, after two weeks, count their votes in Iowa. Hoax number 7!” Trump tweeted at 10:36 a.m.
The Kremlin also denied the charge on Friday.
“These are more paranoid announcements which, to our regret, will multiply as we get closer to the election,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “They have nothing to do with the truth.”
The denials came a day after The New York Times reported that a top intelligence official briefed the congressional intelligence committees on Feb. 13 that Russia was again trying to tilt the election in Trump’s favor.
Trump was furious when he learned of the briefing and sharply questioned acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire about it in the Oval Office the next day, the paper reported.
Five days later, Trump named a loyalist, US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, to replace Maguire as acting spy chief.
If the intelligence assessment is accurate, it would be the second time in two elections that Moscow intervened to boost both Sanders and Trump.
Special counsel Robert Mueller issued a 448-page report that found the Russians mounted an extensive social-media campaign to aid both candidates to undermine Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid.
With Post wires