Yesterday the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced a report about foreign interference in the 2020 election will be delayed. Reportedly, there is a dispute about how much influence China had in the outcome.
"to submit the IC’s classified assessment on foreign threats to the 2020 U.S. elections. The IC has received relevant reporting since the election and a number of agencies have not finished coordinating on the product." (2/3)
— Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) December 16, 2020
"The DNI is committed to providing this report to our customers expeditiously.” (3/3)
— Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) December 16, 2020
During an interview with Fox News Wednesday night, former White House Deputy National Security Advisor KT McFarland gave her assessment about why the report is being delayed.
"That's [the delay] pretty significant. What that means is there's not uniform agreement within the intelligence community about whether there was or wasn't Chinese influence and how much there was or wasn't. I think you've got to assume that at least one part of our intelligence community thinks that there was major interference which is why there's debate over this," McFarland said. "Now, I suspect that when the report comes out, you know they always want to make these things sound like everybody agrees, well chances are not everybody does agree on this and what kind of influence and what kind of interruption it was. Was it something to do with cyber attacks? Was it something to do with the balloting? Was it something to do with influence peddling? Was it something to do with bots and kind of stirring the pot? All those things are a range of issues and I'm assuming these reason this is delayed because there's probably something pretty explosive in there."
The report must be eventually published by law and is expected before January 20, 2021.