Trump: Watching 'closely' foreign election threats

U.S. President Donald Trump says his administration is watching "closely" countries that are posing a threat to the 2020 presidential election.

U.S. intelligence officials said Friday they believe that Russia is using a variety of measures to denigrate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden ahead of the November election.

Individuals linked to the Kremlin are boosting Trump's reelection bid, the country's counterintelligence chief said, in the most specific warning to date about the threat of foreign interference.

U.S. officials also believe that China does not want Trump to win a second term and has accelerated its criticism of the White House, expanding its efforts to shape public policy in America and to pressure political figures seen as opposed to Beijing's interests.

The statement from William Evanina is believed to be the most pointed declaration by the U.S. intelligence community linking the Kremlin to efforts to get Trump reelected — a sensitive subject for a president who has rejected intelligence agency assessments that Russia tried to help him in 2016.

Asked by reporters during a news conference in his Bedminister resort Friday evening, Trump insisted: "I think that the last person Russia wants to see in office is Donald Trump, because nobody's been tougher on Russia than I have."

"China would love us to have an election where Donald Trump lost to sleepy Joe Biden," the president said. "They would own our country. "

The latest intelligence assessment reflects concerns not only about Russia but China and Iran as well, warning 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."

Concerns about election interference are especially acute following a wide-ranging effort by Russia to meddle in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf through both the hacking of Democratic emails and a covert social media campaign aimed at sowing discord among U.S. voters.

Trump has routinely resisted the idea that the Kremlin favored him in 2016, but the intelligence assessment released Friday indicates that unnamed Kremlin-linked actors are again working to boost his candidacy on social media and Russian television.