CORONAVIRUS MISINFORMATION FLAGGED

The senior official coordinating election security intelligence across the United States government warned in a rare interview that “more aggressive activity” to spread coronavirus disinformation is expected before the Nov. 3 election – and beyond – and acknowledged the government needs to do a “much better job” to protect Americans from being fooled, according to KCRA 3 News.

The director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Bill Evanina, told the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit in a more than hour-long interview this week he “absolutely” expects more foreign influence operations targeting American audiences with false information about COVID-19, the pandemic and President Donald Trump’s infection with the virus.

‘More aggressive activity’ to come

“We do expect, and we have seen – we’ll continue to see more aggressive activity from our adversaries on the president with respect to his COVID situation. So that is a problem for us on a national security level,” he said.

Evanina is leading the election security effort for all U.S. intelligence agencies and says the coronavirus and the president’s infection have handed America’s adversaries – particularly Russia, China, and Iran – another way to divide the country.

“It does impact the elections and it does have impact of our American ethos because we see all three nation-state threat actors have already been playing in this COVID world since March. This only exacerbates their ability to do so at scale,” he said.

“You name the issue, our adversaries will use it as a driving wedge in our country.”