US presidential candidate Joe Biden said that US intelligence canceled election security briefings for Congress in order to hide Vladimir Putin's participation in Donald Trump's re-election. This is stated in a statement posted on the official website of the Democrat politician.

According to Biden, the order of the Director of US National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to curtail the briefings is "shameless and biased manipulation, the purpose of which is to protect the personal interests of President Trump."

“There is only one conclusion that suggests itself: President Trump hopes that Vladimir Putin will once again help him increase his chances of candidacy and avert his eyes from egregious examples of his own inability to be a leader for our state during the many crises we are facing. And he doesn't want the American people to know what steps Vladimir Putin is taking to help Trump re-election to a second term, or why Putin is so eager to intervene, because Donald Trump's foreign policy is a real gift to the Kremlin, ”Biden said in a statement.

On August 29, National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe sent a letter to the US Congress, in which he notified parliamentarians that in the run-up to November, the intelligence community would reduce the number of briefings held in the format of meetings for congressmen on the security of elections and replace them with written summaries.

“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence will fulfill its obligation to fully and timely inform Congress ahead of the presidential election primarily through completed written intelligence materials,” the documents, copies of which came to The Hill, said.

Ratcliffe's letter notes that the move will help protect the sources and methods of American intelligence services, as well as prevent the disclosure of classified intelligence information.

"Plums" from the Congress

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff criticized the decision to cancel the briefings. In their joint speech, Democratic politicians said that the presidential administration is trying to hide information related to the elections from Congress and US citizens.

“This is a shocking refusal to comply with the statutory duty to inform Congress in a timely manner and a betrayal of the public's right to know how foreign forces are trying to undermine our democracy. This intelligence belongs to the American people, not to the institutions that are responsible for it, ”- quoted the statement of the Democrats The Hill.

  • U.S. Congress meeting
  • Reuters
  • © Joshua Roberts

Pelosi and Schiff promised that they would use the full range of measures available to the House of Representatives to get the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to fulfill their duties. In addition, the Democrats said that instead of transparency, the Trump administration is trying to promote a false version of the equal interest of several countries in the elections and US politics.

“The goals and actions of Russia, China and Iran are different. Only one country - Russia - is actively taking a set of measures to undermine the presidential elections and ensure the outcome that the Kremlin considers to be most in line with its interests, "the address of the representatives of the Congress emphasizes.

In turn, Donald Trump, commenting on Ratcliffe's decision, said that it was made, among other things, in order to prevent the leak of intelligence that took place after the briefings.

“Director Ratcliffe was giving information to the committee and there were leaks. It was Sly Adam Schiff or someone else, but there is someone on the committee who leaks information and does bad things ... and we are tired of it, "Trump said during a press conference in Texas. 

Biden line

It is not the first time in the past few months that Joe Biden has accused Russia and Vladimir Putin personally of trying to influence the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections in the United States. So, during his speech to reporters on June 30 in his home state of Delaware, he said that Putin allegedly did not want Biden to become the president of the United States.

Then in July, the presidential candidate issued a statement in which he argued that if he wins, Russia will face consequences in the form of sanctions and cyberspace responses if it intervenes in America's democratic process again.

"Despite the fact that Russia's malicious actions as a result of the work of the US intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and bipartisan congressional committees have been exposed, the Kremlin has not abandoned its attempts to interfere in our democratic processes," Biden said in a statement.

The Russian authorities have repeatedly stressed that allegations of interference are unsubstantiated and are used in the United States as a means to discredit political opponents. However, the American media and representatives of the political establishment continue to disseminate this information, including at the state level.

According to Yuri Rogulev, director of the Franklin Roosevelt Foundation for the Study of the United States at Moscow State University, Joe Biden's statements that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections and is going to do the same this year are meaningless.

“In the current situation, it reaches the point of absurdity, because if in the previous campaign there were some clues in the form of advertising materials, now this information has been sucked from the finger, so in this case, for the greater importance and visibility of objectivity, the special services are attracted,” noted political scientist.

According to Konstantin Blokhin, a researcher at the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Biden made another groundless statement about Russia's "interference" in order to justify his loss if Trump wins.

"The topic of Russia's 'interference' in the elections will not disappear either before the elections or after the announcement of the results, since the Democrats will again want to accuse Trump that he won thanks to the activities of Russia," the expert explained in a conversation with RT.

The political scientist recalled that the topic of alleged Russian interference in the US elections did not completely disappear, but interest in it gradually began to decline after the end of the work of the so-called Muller Commission.

Recall that in 2017, the US Department of Justice began an investigation into the "connections" of Donald Trump's election headquarters with Russia, which was conducted by a commission led by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

The investigation ended in March 2019, following which a report was released, in which Mueller admitted that no ties between Trump's entourage and the Kremlin had been established over the two years of the investigation.

However, as the presidential election approaches, the Democrats will make new statements about "interference" by Russia, believes Konstantin Blokhin.

In turn, Yuri Rogulev added that Biden and the US Democratic Party would not give up on promoting this idea, despite the lack of any convincing evidence.

“If he loses, Biden will blame his failure on anyone. However, it is not known to what extent the argument of Russia's "interference" in the elections will be held a second time, since the public has not forgotten that the investigation of the Mueller Commission about Trump's "ties" with Russia and the demand for his impeachment ultimately did not lead to anything, "the political scientist concluded.